What are the benefits of involvement?
It takes strong commitment from Board members, senior managers from health & social care, advocacy groups, voluntary groups and carers to fully involve carers; it’s not the easy option.
Involving carers also places a responsibility to feedback on what change has happened as a result or, if no change has happened, the reasons why not. But the benefits can be enormous. These include:
- Problems arising from proposed changes to services can be pinpointed in advance and avoided
- The results of consultation can be used to help make decisions about policies, priorities and strategies
- Services can be targeted more closely on providing what people want and avoiding what people do not want
- Take-up of services can be improved, making unit costs lower, especially where there is a charge for services
- User and carer satisfaction with services can be monitored over time, providing a useful performance indicator on improvements to the quality of services
- Carers who are involved in decision-making feel valued
