What matters to US (Users of Services) in shared care and decision making

Successful collaborative work in 4 West Yorkshire Universities related to service
user & carer engagement in higher education led to a successful bid for research
funding to the Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for
Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL). ALPS is a collaborative programme
between five Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) with a proven track record for
excellence in learning and teaching in health and social care. This includes the
University of Bradford, University of Huddersfield, the University of Leeds, Leeds
Metropolitan University and the University of York St John. Further information
about the programme can be found at the central website www.ALPSCETL.
leeds.ac.uk . The aim of ALPS is to ensure that students graduating from
courses in health and social care are fully equipped to perform confidently and
competently at the start of their professional careers and so improve patient care.
The aim and method of the research was to establish a collaborative inquiry process
with service users and carers to explore what professionals need to do to help
patients/ clients and carers play their part in shared care and decision making.
Action learning groups were held with service users and carers that informed the
development of a Delphi type survey which was circulated to a wider group of
service users and carers, students and academics related to a number of health and
social care courses.
The strengths of this research are:
• That it was service user led/focused
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• Dialogue with service users and carers that followed at iterative, reflective
process.
• The collaborative, inter disciplinary nature.
• Development of reusable learning objects - podcasts relative to all health and
social care professions.