Service User Involvement and Participation

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Service user involvement and participation has become a standard principle in guiding social care planning in order to improve in the developing and delivery of service to meet diverse and complex needs in a more effective way. Key pieces of legislation states plainly that service users through a partnership approach should be enabled to have voice on how the services they are using should be delivered (Letchfield, 2009). The Scottish Executive (2006a:32) helpfully state ‘Increasing personalisation of services is both an unavoidable and desirable direction of travel for social work services. Unavoidable in the sense that both the population and policy expect it; desirable in the extent to which it builds upon the capacity of individuals to find their own solutions and to self-care, rather than creating dependence on services’ This essay response will focus on justifying why service user involvement / participation is important in the development of services for adults. To understand this, I will first look into the ideological principles that have shifted social work practice towards user participation before looking at the different ways these concepts have played out, with a particular focus on service users with disabilities. Service user ‘involvement’ and ‘participation’ in social work practice is underpinned by the fundamental values that services should be ‘user-centred’, ‘user led’ and ‘needs led’ (Warren, 2008). I have chosen to focus on adults with disabilities because there has been much recent development and policies put into place for this group of people. However, they are still considered one of the most vulnerable groups in society (Kemshall and Littlechild, 2000. The meaning of disability is a contested concep... ... middle of paper ... ..., 37(3): 387-403 Radley, M. (2009). Understanding the social exclusion and stalled welfare of citizens with learning disabilities. Disability and Society, 23(4): 489-501. Leadbetter, D. and Lownsbrough, H. (2005) Personalisation and Participation: The Future of Social Care in Scotland, London, Demos. Galpin, D. and Bates, N. 2009. Social work practice with adults. Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd. Shakespeare, T. (1993) Disabled people's self-organisation: a new social movement?, Disability, Handicap & Society, 8, pp. 249-264 . Waine, B. (2000). Managing peformanve through pay. In J, Clarke, S. Gewitz and E. karban, 2001) MH Citizen involvement: A practical guide for change. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan. Beresford, P., 8! Harding, T. (Eds.). (1993). Beresford, P and Harding, T. (1993). A Challenge to Change: Practical Experiences of Building User-led Services.

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