1. Achieving partnership working with older people.
Josie Tetley – Senior Lecturer
Department of Nursing
The Open University

2. Main aims of teleconference
To demonstrate the ways in which older people’s views can be heard and used to improve health care services and research practice.
Focus on:
Methodologies
Methods
Practical Considerations
That can help nurses achieve effective and meaningful participation and service user involvement in research

3. Background to involvement
Current drive for user involvement stimulated in the 1990s
Governments, charities, advocacy groups and service argued that consultation and user involvement could improve the quality, relevance and focus of services (Carter and Beresford, 2000; Nolan et al., 2007).

4. User involvement – the challenges
Meaningful and active participation affected by:
cultural divisions,
representativeness,
bias,
research skills capacity,
ill health,
time and resources’
(Boote et al., 2002; Fudge et al., 2007).

5. Methodologies Many terms used to define user involvement approaches
Participatory research
Emancipatory research
cooperative inquiry
constructivism
action research (collaborative action research, social action research)
consumer involvement
consumer consultation

6. Methods Participant observation Reflective diary Interviews
Individual narrative stories
Focus groups
Creative arts/drama
The ways in which we collect our data can also improve our ability to involve our research participants more fully in our research work.
I have found the use of participant observation useful in terms of building up relationships with the older people I hoped to work with. I was also able to gain a wide range of insights that may not have emerged by merely conducting interviews. It also gave people time to talk to me about my study and ask me questions. I found that people then started coming up to me in the study site to share their stories and experiences that they thought would be relevant to my study.
Interviews were conducted with people who I had met and we knew one another before the formal interview started.
In order to get their views on the interview data I wrote individual narrative stories which I was able to take back to people. These were useful in terms of getting people to examine the issues that we had arisen in the interviews and tell me whether they felt my initial interpretation of what they had told me was accurate.
I had less success with focus groups. I tried to use these to try and get the older people to think about the experience of having working as a researcher.

7. Putting participation into practice
Narrative stories
Using creative arts
Research advisory committees
Practical considerations and responsibilities

8. Narratives
Enabling commentaries by participants on a structured summary of the information that they had shared with me.
Identifying the factors that people identified as affecting their decision and choice-making process, when using or contemplating using care services.
Unraveling wider life experiences in relation to decision and choice-making processes that might not have been immediately obvious.

9. Narratives
Enabling a more holistic individual perspective which drew on the formal interview material and the notes that I had made during the time I had undertaken participant observation work in each setting.
Enabling me to feed back to participants the value of the information that they had shared with me.
Raising empowerment and ethical issues.

10. Promoting active ageing
Nurse led multi disciplinary team worked with older people in the Sheltered Scheme in two major ways:
As participants in the Activity and Culture centre and the associated activities.
As advisors to the project

11. Involvement of older people in the project
Tenants - actively selecting the choice of activities undertaken as part of the project.
Consultants - regarding the design and layout of the data collection instruments,
Participants in the programme will also be offered the opportunity to be involved in analysing and interpreting the data collected, should they wish to do this.

12. Art sessions

13. Art sessions

14. Gone to Pot

15. Learner Exchange

16. Evaluation Positive responses to the programme of activities
Honest feedback about what worked and what didn’t
Seasonal nature of activities
see Sanders, 2006; Tetley and Mountain, 2006; Tetley et al., 2006

17. Older people’s research advisory committee
The group helped me to work effectively and sensitively with different community groups;
Personal experiences as service users have benefited the research;
Our work had a reciprocal element that we did not initially envisage;
Engagement with a wide range of initiatives benefited us as a group.
I will use some examples from our work to illustrate how:
The group have helped me to work effectively and sensitively with different community groups;
Personal experiences as service users have benefited the research;
Our work has a reciprocal element that we did not initially envisage;
our engagement with a wide range of initiatives has benefited us as a group

18. Practical support from research advisors
Ethics paper work
Help getting consent forms signed
Advice to work more sensitively with black elders
(see Tetley et al., 2003)

19. Practical considerations and responsibilities
Paying people’s expenses
Transport issues
Suitable accommodation
Good working relationship
Carer relief
Time for people to talk through issues
Protection against exploitation
Training
Preparation for participation
Be prepared for the unexpected

20. Achieving partnership working with older people.
Josie Tetley – Senior Lecturer
Department of Nursing
The Open University