User and Carer Involvement in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: A Norwegian Staff Perspective

Abstract

It has been suggested that user involvement in heath care leads to improved services. The aim of the study was to explore attitudes towards user involvement of staff employed in Norwegian Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Most of the investigated mental health service staff expressed the opinion that users should be involved in the planning of their own treatment and generally have a positive attitude towards user involvement. Skepticism was related to some aspects of involvement and does not contradict their generally positive attitude towards user involvement.

Inpatients’ and Providers’ Experiences with User Involvement in Inpatient Care

“…Some empirical studies suggest that providers' hold positive views regarding service user involvement, and consider it important for service development [5][6][7][8][9]. Other studies of providers' perspectives point to a variety of understandings of the concept and of possible strategies that may be used to promote user involvement [6,10].…”

What approaches for promoting shared decision‐making are used in child mental health? A scoping review

“…Importantly, barriers were identified at all levels of care, including the professional level, relationship level, service user/carer level, service level, and context level (Gondek et al, 2017). 1 Despite these barriers, there is increasing commitment to implementing and embedding SDM in routine practice (Richter, Halliday, Grømer, & Dybdahl, 2009;Soffe, Read, & Frude, 2004). Evidence from routinely collected data suggests that higher levels of both child-and parent-reported experience of SDM are associated with higher levels of child-and parentreported improvement in psychosocial difficulties (Edbrooke-Childs et al, 2015).…”

Attitudes of mental health professionals towards service user involvement

“…For service user involvement to function, the interaction between service users and staff members must be the starting point. To assess the attitudes of staff members is therefore of the utmost importance . Reorientation on an individual level requires organisational support and organisational change must permeate every aspect of the organisation's services .…”