User and Carer Involvement: An Outcomes Approach

Improving outcomes for people who use services and their unpaid carers is the over-arching focus of JIT’s work. Outcomes can be interpreted as the impact of services on people’s lives, and defining user and carer outcomes is increasingly recognised as necessary in order to deliver effective, responsive public services.

Involving users and carers in shaping services is also critical to achieving partnership objectives. A key JIT objective has been to combine user and carer involvement with an outcomes approach to planning, delivering, evaluating, and improving services.

In Summer 2006, Margaret Whoriskey, JIT Assistant Director, commissioned two researchers, Ailsa Cook and Emma Miller, to develop a toolkit to achieve this objective.

The result is the User Defined Service Evaluation Toolkit (UDSET), the final version of which is now available for download, and work is underway on implementation of the toolkit in eight pilot sites in Scotland.

This section of the website:

  • Outlines the Project History and background from initial research through consultation and scoping work, to piloting and development of the UDSET
  • Shares the Pilot Learning distilled from the eight sites to date, including answers to the most frequently asked questions
  • Provides access to Support Materials developed to help with UDSET implementation
  • Describes the use of Digital Stories to reinforce the UDSET outcomes and to share experiences of using the UDSET in practice

If you’d like more information about our user and carer involvement project, please contact us.