Service user involvement in practitioner education: Movement politics and transformative change.

This paper will attempt to celebrate both key developments and best practice involving the users of health and social care services in programmes of practitioner education in a UK context, and offer a critical appraisal of the extent to which such initiatives meet some of the more transformative objectives sought by service user activists for change. The approach is largely that of a discussion paper but we will illustrate some of the themes relating to movement activism with selected data. These data relate to earlier research and two specially convened focus groups within the Comensus initiative at the University of Central Lancashire; itself constituted as a piece of participatory action research.

The value of involvement from the perspective of service users and carers engaged in practitioner education: not just a cash nexus.

This paper presents qualitative findings emergent from a participatory action research (PAR) study focused on developing service user and carer involvement in a university setting. The involvement of these experts by experience in practitioner education for health and social care, and nursing in particular, is now an international phenomenon. Adhering to the philosophy and practices of PAR, the project and the writing of this paper have been collectively produced.

The UCLan community engagement and service user support (Comensus) project: valuing authenticity, making space for emergence.

Objective: To develop and evaluate service user, carer and community involvement in health and social care education.

Background: Despite the high policy profile of involvement issues, there appear to be no published accounts of schemes that have used a systematic whole-faculty approach to community engagement in health and social care higher education. FOCUS OF THIS PAPER: The set up and early development of a faculty-wide community engagement project.