Authors: Alyssa Morse, David Lovegrove, Amelia Gulliver, Michelle Banfield
Year: 2019
Event: 2019 TheMHS Conference
Subject: Understanding Participation: Measuring the value and impact of consumer and carer voices in services and policy.
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract:
Biography:
Alyssa is a Postdoctoral Fellow at ACACIA: The ACT Consumer and Carer Mental Health Research Unit. In this role, Alyssa contributes to a variety of research projects that are relevant to and for the benefit of mental health consumers and carers in the ACT.
Lived experience perspectives have an essential role to play in developing healthy communities. Are these voices being heard and integrated at the level of health policy and services? And how are they valued by the people who are listening? The thoughts, insights and experiences of consumers, carers, service providers and policy makers can help develop our understanding of how lived experience participation is valued in the health sector, and of what “value” means from different perspectives. ACACIA: The ACT Consumer and Carer Mental Health Research Unit is currently working in partnership with representatives from Health Care Consumers’ Association, The ACT Mental Health Consumer Network, Carers ACT, and ACT Health, and independent consumer and carer representatives to explore these concepts. Our project aims to understand the current nature of consumer and carer participation in the Australian Capital Territory and to explore the concept and meaning of value in the context of lived experience participation. Our long-term goal is to co-create a set of consumer- and carer-developed principles for participation, value and impact. In this presentation, we will discuss the preliminary findings of the project and reflect on the process of working in partnership to design and conduct a research project.
Learning Objectives
Learning Objective 1: From our early findings, audience members will gain insights into the changing landscape of lived experience participation and the meaning of “value” in this context. This presentation is also an opportunity to learn about co-creation and involvement processes from the experiences and reflections of the research team.
Learning Objective 2: Australian Government policies emphasise a key active role for consumers and carers in the development of health policies and services, including mental health services. The ultimate goal of this project is to co-create a set of consumer- and carer-developed principles for participation, value and impact, and an accompanying set of indicators that can be used by the health sector for measurement.
References
Banfield, M., Morse, A., Gulliver, A., Griffiths, K. (2018) Mental health research priorities in Australia: a consumer and carer agenda. Health Research Policy and Systems, 16(119). https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-018-0395-9
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