Appeal for people with mental health problems to help with research

Researchers commissioned to transform mental health care in England and Wales are appealing for service users in the Nottinghamshire area to take part in the ground-breaking project. The team from The University of Nottingham 's School of Health Sciences is working with experts from Manchester University and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust to create a system that will involve mental health patients more closely in the planning and delivery of their care. The researchers are appealing for patients to them to contribute their own personal understanding and experiences of 'care planning', what user/carer 'involvement' actually means to them, and what impact they feel care planning has. This information will then be used to develop a tool to accurately measure user/carer involvement, which is currently lacking in assessing care planning. A platform for patients and carers. The Enhancing the quality of user-involved care planning in Mental Health Services (EQUIP) programme is funded by the National Institute for Health Research ( NIHR ) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research programme and will run for five years. Its recent review of current mental health policy implementation has shown that service users are not being involved enough in the planning of their care even though that has been the aspiration.