User Involvement Service
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User Involvement Service

As a result of the decision by Lambeth Council and NHS Lambeth not to re-commission this service for 2011- 2012 onwards the User Involvement Service is no longer operating with effect from 1st April 2011.

We are very sorry not to be able to continue to provide this very important service for disabled and older people with our partner organisation Age UK Lambeth

If you would like more information about any aspect of the work which the project undertook, or to discuss DASL's continuing role in supporting disabled people's involvement in their borough, please contact

DASL's major user involvement focus now is on the development of the Lambeth Centre for Independent Living

Disabled people have strong views on topics such as transport, housing, access and disability discrimination but often find it hard to get someone to listen to them or take responsibility for addressing the questions to which they need answers.  The role of the User Involvement Service was to strengthen the voices of disabled and older people in Lambeth and to ensure that service providers heard them.

This was a combined user involvement service for disabled and older people, jointly managed by DASL and Age UK Lambeth. We worked with Age UK Lambeth to deliver user involvement in a wide range of important strategies and service developments.

The project was funded between 2007 - 2011 by Lambeth Adults’ and Community Services and NHS Lambeth. For three years previously, separate user involvement posts for disabled and older people had been funded at DASL and at Age UK Lambeth to work with the two client groups.

How we involved people

This was done through a variety of approaches including:

.  The User Involvement Worker visiting Support and User Groups

• One-off consultation events

• Surveys

• Lay Assessing (where trained disabled volunteers interview other disabled people about the services they use)

• Formal user representation on the Physical and Sensory Impairment partnership Board (formerly the Lambeth Disability Partnership Board)

.  Supporting the work of the Lambeth Older People’s Forum and the Lambeth Pan-Disability Forum

What we did in 2009/2010

You can read a report on some of the key pieces of involvement work we did with older and disabled people between April 2009 and March 2010 here

User_Involvement_Service_DOP_report_2009-10.pdf

We will also be providing a report on the work during the last year of the project here soon.