The User Involvement in Local Diabetes Care project applied and tested approaches to involving people living with diabetes (users and carers) to influence local diabetes care in three local NHS organisations. These approaches have been developed by Diabetes UK user involvement team. The project also allowed the development of new approaches to involvement.

Diabetes UK would like to thank NHS Diabetes for funding the User Involvement in Local Diabetes Care project, which ran from June 2009 to June 2011. This project informed the development of this resource.

We would like to thank the project’s three local co-ordinators:

• Jackie Rooney (North Mersey Diabetes Network)
• Christine Mead (NHS Hammersmith and Fulham)
• Shona Brewster (NHS Lincolnshire).

The user groups

Thanks also to all the people living with diabetes who participated in the three user groups and have so enthusiastically shared their thoughts and experiences to help the NHS provide better diabetes care.

The project evaluation

An evaluation of the project was carried out by TwoCan Associates. For more information on the project, read the Executive Summary or the full report: Evaluation of the User Involvement in Local Diabetes Care project. The findings of this report are reflected in the advice given in this resource.