4 April 2012

One of the key features of CQC's themed review of learning disability services has been the involvement in the inspections of experts by experience– people with personal experience of these services as service users or family carers.

Putting service users at ease

Laura D Broughton and John Woodhouse have been involved in 26 of those inspections, with Laura taking part in seven and John 19.

Both had been recruited as experts by experience for CQC through a consortium of smaller and user-led organisations led by Choice Support. Laura said: "It was an eye opener for me to see other services and different structures. I hadn't been employed before so this was a good opening for me and confidence building. I hadn't been around people before who have ideas of disability but treat you as an equal.

John said: "It was a great opportunity to help user voices to be heard and an opportunity to speak to them myself when they might not have been comfortable speaking to others. In one place someone did speak to me one-to-one and the staff were astonished."

Experts by experience had two days of training, but even so, there was still an element of stepping into the unknown. Laura and John have both used learning disability services, but neither had lived in residential care. As John put it: "I had a good idea from the work I do with VoiceAbility but didn't know what to expect from each service – and things varied from service to service."

He also found that the best method for him was to not always stick rigidly to the questions on the forms: "As I did inspections I learned to ask questions in different ways."

Read more by following this link:

http://www.cqc.org.uk/public/news/experts-experience-make-their-mark