Involving People Annual Meeting 2010

12 Apr 2010

We’d like to say a big thank you to all the network members who attended our Annual Meeting, which took place on 18 March at the Future Inn, Cardiff Bay. We had a great time on the day and enjoyed meeting a lot of new faces and catching up with more familiar ones!

Presentations from the Annual Meeting can be viewed here:

Involving People Introduction - Judith Oades & Bryan Collis

Catalysts for Change - Derek Stewart

Celebrating Success - David Rea

The theme of this year’s Annual Meeting was ‘Stories’ and throughout the day we heard stories and were shown stories; during presentations, during the workshops and through the medium of Digital Storytelling. Everybody has a story to tell, an experience to share, and we invited delegates and speakers to really listen to people’s stories, to strive to understand the issues being spoken about, to recognise the barriers faced by individuals and to remember the important messages being delivered.

During some of the workshops, we told stories of personal experiences of problems and discussed ‘barriers to involvement’, both from the service user/carer’s perspective and from the point of view of the researcher. It was an interesting session which highlighted the importance of trying to meet the needs of the individual; we are all different and what may not be a barrier for one person may be a mountain to climb for another.

Our guest speakers, Tim Maughan and Derek Stewart, were greatly appreciated and the feedback we received for the day was overwhelmingly positive. Professor Maughan, Clinical Director of NISCHR CRC (formerly CRC Cymru), spoke of the changes experienced by the Clinical Research Collaboration since its inception and the aims and ambitions of the collaboration for the future. He explained the restructure from CRC Cymru to NISCHR CRC and the implications for Involving People and the network. Derek Stewart, OBE, is a champion of Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) and spoke of changing the culture of service user involvement in health and social care research. He spoke of service users/carers being ‘agents of change’ by becoming leaders and altering behaviours through truth telling and targeted activity.