The aim of the User Involvement in Local Diabetes Care project was to establish systematic, structured and sustainable user involvement in three NHS organisations (NHS Lincolnshire, NHS Hammersmith & Fulham and North Mersey Diabetes Network) and to draw out the lessons to help others develop user involvement in diabetes care. This two year project was funded by NHS Diabetes and led by Diabetes UK.
The Diabetes UK project manager worked closely with the three NHS organisations to establish the user involvement, support activity, problem solve and to facilitate sharing the learning between the three organisations. The Diabetes UK project team met with each organisation regularly to review progress and to plan the way forward, especially in the light of NHS changes.
Context for involvement
The context for involvement was different in the three pilot organisations:
- In Hammersmith & Fulham the diabetes services were going through a process of service redesign.
- In Lincolnshire, they wanted to establish an effective service user group to help guide the implementation of a previously agreed model for diabetes care.
- In North Mersey, the objective was to improve diabetes care across the North Mersey Diabetes Network by putting the voice of service users at the heart of decision-making.
Each of the three organisations recruited a group of approximately 25 people living with diabetes to broadly represent the local area in terms of age, type of diabetes, ethnic diversity, other health conditions, etc. Each organisation then held an induction meeting. At this meeting, service users were asked to identify their priorities for diabetes services.
The organisation’s priorities, together with the priorities identified by the groups were used to establish a work plan. This work plan was adapted as necessary throughout the project. Groups met monthly, six-weekly or bi-monthly.
Representatives were chosen from each of the three user groups to attend the relevant decision-making bodies at each of the project partner sites.