Involving People with Lived Experience

WDADP has identified “involvement” as an important cross-cutting theme to all its work.  This commitment to involve children, young people and service users in co-production of plans, delivery and evaluation of services and initiatives that affect them is in line with good practice and fundamental to the successful achievement of outcomes.  It demonstrates the WDADP response to the actions in the recently published national strategies:

Alcohol Framework 2018: Preventing Harm - focus on prevention with Involving Children and Young People at the heart (Action Rights, respect and recovery: alcohol and drug treatment strategy - commitments:

• C3 – Involve children parents and other family members in the planning, development and delivery of services
• R4 – Involving people with lived experience
• R11 – Co-produced action plan to deliver commitments

The Partnership Delivery Framework further emphasises the importance of involving people affected by alcohol and drugs in the planning, development and delivery of services to deliver shared outcomes.  In addition, ADP Ministerial Priority 1 requires that ADPs ensure mechanisms are in place for people with lived and living experience of addiction/recovery and of participating in services to be involved in delivering, planning and developing services.

The West Dunbartonshire HSCP Strategic Plan already highlights that:

“A key principle of the Partnership’s planning process is a co-productive approach that is equitable and transparent, and therefore open to influence from all stakeholders via an on-going dialogue with people who use services, their carers and providers”.

This commitment is further outlined in the West Dunbartonshire HSCP: Participation and Engagement Strategy 2020-2023.

The recent SHAAP report, ‘Stand up and tell me your story’ – Meanings and importance of lived and living experiences for alcohol and drug policy: findings from a qualitative study (Feb 2020) makes recommendations for utilising in a meaningful way the lived experience of individuals, adopting a human rights approach to help to change and develop policies, services, environments and structures.  Recommendation 4 is clearly directed at ADPs to engage with lived experience in their communities to develop policies and practice.  This should be monitored via annual reporting demonstrating engagement activities and providing the evidence of what has changed.

In order to rise to this challenge, in the context of COVID-19 recovery and taking into account the need to adopt new ways of working, WDADP is committed to involving people with lived experience through the following actions:

• Through ADP networks, learn from other areas' good practice in using technology and other innovative approaches to involvement.
• Develop, improve and evaluate ways that people can participate in their own recovery and play a role in the everyday running of services.
• Use existing engagement mechanisms (e.g. Local Engagement Networks) and other established systems to review how health and social care services are designed, delivered and accessed at local level.
• Build on the community engagement work carried out in 2019/20 to enable the ongoing participation of children, young people, families and service users in the co-production of plans, delivery and evaluation of services and initiatives that affect them.
• Carry out the annual survey of people with lived experience to assess local services in relation to the Quality Principles.