6 Service user involvement
It is important to engage and involve service users in a respectful and reciprocal way. In their book Service User and Carer Involvement in Health and Social Care, in the chapter ‘Arts-based practice: learning from survivor artists’ (Fawcett et al. 2018, p. 87–108), Dawn River explores with Tessa Lowe the significance of hearing and giving space within educational and training contexts, to the voice of the service user. Dawn is an author, survivor and academic; and Tessa is co-author, survivor and poet. Tessa’s poem ‘Accolade’ (reproduced below) was written with reference to a university-based Survivor Arts exhibition. At this event, Dawn had created a space in which the University could be challenged to think more critically about its approach to Service User Involvement. In her poem, Tessa outlines just how vitally important it was to have her voice of protest heard (Fawcett et al., 2018, p. 96). While it might have initially appeared from the organisers’ point of view, very positive and inclusive to provide certificates to every service user attending the event, this did not take into account the way in which this was done. Providing standard certificates to all did not appear to respect the unique contributions of individual attendees, especially on this occasion, for Tessa.
‘Accolade’ by Tessa Kate Lowe
I arrived
At half past nine
Just in time
To receive my glossy certificate of appreciation
For having made a valuable contribution
To the august ivory-tower event.
How perceptively clairvoyant
They must have been
To have seen
So far in advance
That I would make
Such a valuable contribution
To the Alice-in-Wonderland proceedings.
I could have been flattered
Had it not mattered
That every service user
Sorry,
Every person with ‘mental health experience’
Received one too!
What is a mentally healthy person to do
With such banal inanity
Such institutional insanity
Such seduction of one’s vanity?
Here’s a valuable contribution
To your striking unthinking -
We’re mad.
Not stupid!