Getting involved
Getting involved is a great way for service users tell us what they think.
By attending regular meetings as part of a service user group or by taking part in one-off focus groups, service users can make a real difference to the way we deliver our services.
If you are a MST service users, you can find out how to get involved by contacting:
- your support worker
- Joanne Starkie in London
Tel: 020 7501 2268
Email - Karenjeet Mahal in the Midlands and Yorkshire
Tel: 0116 242 4305
Email
Why get involved?
By getting involved you can tell us how to make our services better and help us make the changes we need. Not only that, but you can gain valuable experience yourself.
By coming to meetings, helping to interview people or taking part in other projects, you can add skills and experience to your CV. You also get the chance to meet other service users.
Read Carly’s case study to see the benefits of service user involvement.
How it helps us
Service user involvement underpins everything we do and has already helped improve what we do. Service users have worked with us to:
- decide who we should employ
- decide what our rules and policies should be, such as what should be in our Complaints and Customer Feedback policy
- organise social events
- develop a service user involvement strategy to find out how best to get your feedback
Service users have also helped us develop a service user involvement strategy which will help us get more people involved.
How we can help you get involved
- We provide a range of support service users to get involved.
- We can help meet travelling, childcare and other costs.
- We can organise for interpreters to come to meetings if they are needed.
- We offer training related to getting involved, such as courses on confidence building or committee skills.
We also try to make sure that the information we give out can be understood by everyone. This includes: using plain English and pictorial images (pictures that explain the text) in the information we give out; translating important information into the languages most commonly spoken by our service users; and offering information in different formats such as audio CD guides and large print.