Within Our Own Services

 

At the Leatherhead Clubhouse we work hard to find out what all our members want and what they think about our services:

 

We have a weekly house meeting and a quarterly Stakeholder Group where all members, trustees and staff members can review our services and decide future priorities. In addition, since July 2006, we have carried out 7 major consultations with members. These have included consultations about our premises, employment interests and 4 Annual Surveys. It also included the major consultation we carried out in autumn 2007 which we used to design our ”Well-Being” Project.

 

How our consultations work:

• We are guided by the principles of User Focus Monitoring (UFM).  This was developed by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health to encourage service users to carry out research amongst their peers.  Peer research has several strengths- responses to peers are usually more open and questions set by service users uniquely insightful.

• Members and staff work together to produce a questionnaire which is sent out with a stamped addressed envelope to all members in Communique (our weekly newsletter which has a circulation of over 200 members, carers and interested professionals)

• From experience we have learnt that, for a variety of reasons, many members do not respond to the questionnaire. However, we are able to increase the response rate by offering focus groups and “buddies” to help the person concerned complete the form

• Our response rate has consistently been about 40-45% of our active membership.  We would like to increase this further

• When the responses are received the group meets again to analyse the results which are written up and circulated in Communique

• An Action Plan is agreed by members, trustees and staff members

 

More widely

 

Over recent years there has been a growing awareness of the importance of involving service users in training and recruiting mental health professionals and in monitoring, reviewing and planning services. The Leatherhead Clubhouse has developed a very productive relationship with Kingston University and members are actively involved in their social work training.  Members are also represented on a variety of local mental health forums and frequently consulted by the local mental health trust and PCT about service developments.