The views of people who use of Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) services are increasingly used to help service providers and decision makers evaluate, plan and shape services offered. Indeed, the NHS constitution (updated 2015) commits to the inclusion of service user views to refine and improve service.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (UHB) commissioned Cardiff and Vale Action for Mental Health (cavamh) to undertake an engagement exercise with current users of Cardiff and Vale CMHT services to determine their subjective experience with services to date and assess the quality of provision via the views of ‘experts-by-experience’.
The aim of the current project was to determine: (i) what is most valued about current services (i.e. what works); (ii) what people want to see happen more often or start happening (i.e. gaps in current provision) and; (iii) what is happening that people feel shouldn’t happen or should happen less (i.e. what is not working nor valued by service users)