What does PPI mean for self help groups?

• Health services are more likely to ask for and act on feedback from groups and individuals, and to value group members' expertise
  
  
• There should be more chances to influence services directly and indirectly
  
  
• Group members often see the gaps or poor communications between different parts of services - services should be more open to hearing about this
  
  
• Groups may get lots of requests for members to join committees, take part in consultations, or speak to professionals and students: the group may need to think carefully about which are most relevant for the group
  
  
• In some areas, there may be chances to be actively involved as partners in developing or running services, and in research projects
  
  
• More organisations will now offer to pay people or groups for participation - at the very least, expenses should always be covered, and the organisation should arrange what you need to participate
  
  

Patient and Public Involvement locally

At the moment (June 2005), each Primary Care and NHS Trust has a Patient and Public Involvement Forum and a Patient Advice and Liaison Service or PALS. Forums members are people with experience as service users, carers, patients, and other relevant interest or experience. Each Forum has developed its own work programme to look at particular parts of services. Alongside this, PALS collects comments and suggestions about services from members of the public. Trusts vary in how they organise PPI, and how active they have been in initiating consultation and involvement projects, working with their PPI Forums, and making good use of information from PALS.

As staffing in Trusts often changes, and organisation and support for PPI Forums is likely to be reviewed, we do not include contact details on this website. However, Self Help Nottingham's Information Service keeps contact details for local Patient and Public Involvement.


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