Increasing service user and carer involvement in Tower Hamlets

By Syeda Tahir and Stella Lam, Service User Involvement Leads in the QI team

Stella and Syeda, Service User Involvement in QI team

“The drive for quality improvement has been well under way and has shown remarkable signs of a culture change. We want to continue growing culture this by ensuring that service users/carers are also part of this change and feel included in the journey alongside us.

Just as an overview Trust wide there are currently over 100 active projects of which less than a quarter have any service user or carer involvement. With these statistics in mind we are starting a very exciting project with the sole aim of increasing service user/carer involvement in QI within Tower Hamlets Adult Mental Health Directorate.

We’ll be testing some new ideas out to see what works for service users/carers and staff, and we’ll be looking at involvement in terms of ‘Big I’ and ‘little i’. When we say involvement with a ‘Big I’ that means service users and carers are part of a project team, who work on the improvement project on a regular basis. Involvement with a ‘little i’ is when service users and carers contribute towards projects on less frequently, and perhaps just on a consultation basis. 

We are very interested to hear from anyone who would like to be involved to help us achieve our aim.We hope you will join us in this wonderful opportunity.”

Please get in touch with either Syeda Tahir  or Stella Lam for further information or any queries.