EQUIP: Clinical Randomised Control Trial and Process Evaluation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Enhancing the quality of user involved care planning in mental health services (EQUIP): Clinical randomised control trial and process evaluation
IRAS ID
125899
Contact name
Karina Lovell
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Manchester Health and Social Care Trust
Research summary
’Care planning’ has been defined as finding out what a person’s care needs are and then deciding what services can best help them. It sets out what support a person should get, why, when, and details of who is meant to provide it.
Despite general agreement that involving users and carers in care planning is fundamental to improving quality of care and promoting recovery, there is evidence that this does not always occur. Users of mental health services (and their carers) say that they feel excluded and unsupported by services and want to be more involved in their care, but research tells us that this is not happening.
Our research wants to improve user/carer involvement in care planning in mental health services. We have developed a training package for professionals which has been developed by, and will be delivered by users/carers, researchers and health professionals. We will use this package to train health professionals in some community teams and rehabilitation inpatient facilities in Manchester and Nottingham and not do the training in others (chosen by chance). This is called a randomised clinical trial, and means we can then compare the sites and see if the training leads to better involvement of users and carers in their care plan. We can also see whether the benefits outweigh the costs.
We also want to find out what organisational changes need to be made by community teams and rehabilitation inpatient facilities and the wider NHS to improve user and carer involved care planning. We will do this by talking to and observing users, carers, health professionals and managers to find out what helps and what does not help. This is called a ‘process evaluation’. We will also test a new instrument to measure the extent of user and carer involvement in their care planning.
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/NW/0297
Date of REC Opinion
13 May 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion