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Consumers and carers as partners in mental health research: Reflections on the experience of two project teams in Victoria, Australia
Author(s) -
Callander Rosemary,
Ning Lei,
Crowley Anna,
Childs Bianca,
Brisbane Pam,
Salter Tony
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
international journal of mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.911
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1447-0349
pISSN - 1445-8330
DOI - 10.1111/j.1447-0349.2010.00731.x
Subject(s) - facilitator , mental health , general partnership , government (linguistics) , public relations , set (abstract data type) , project team , mental illness , quality (philosophy) , nursing , work (physics) , psychology , service (business) , medical education , medicine , business , knowledge management , marketing , engineering , social psychology , political science , psychiatry , mechanical engineering , linguistics , philosophy , finance , epistemology , computer science , programming language
A successful working partnership in research between a consumer project team from the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council and a carer project team from the Victorian Mental Health Carers Network was forged during their collaborative involvement in an innovative 2‐year pilot project funded by the Victorian Government of Australia. This project trialled new ways of capturing consumer and carer experiences of mental health services, and that feedback was integrated into service quality improvement. Towards the end of the project, an external facilitator was used to enable the two teams to reflect on their experience of working together so that their joint story could be shared with others and used to promote further use of this approach in the mental health field. Main findings included the importance of having strong support and belief at leadership levels, opportunities to build the relationship and develop mutual trust and respect, a common vision and a clearly articulated set of values, targeted training appropriate to the needs of the team members, independent work bases, and mutual support to overcome challenges encountered during the project. The experience forged a close working relationship between the two teams and has set the scene for further participation of consumers and carers in research and innovative quality‐improvement processes in the mental health field.