How
Methods & Models
The resource guide Improving
health services through consumer participation: a resource
guide (IHS) identifies
43 different consumer participation strategies and techniques,
presenting these in a ‘strategy selector table’ (pp18-22).
The table includes the degree of each strategy and its key
attributes.
Briefly, strategies for involving
consumers include (from least complex to complex)
- information provision (to
individual consumers)
- information seeking (surveying
consumers)
- consumer participation in
policy (consumers as representatives at the organisational
level)
Different consumer participation
strategies can be represented as a continuum. This continuum
is commonly referred to as steps in a ladder – a concept developed
in 1969 by S. Arnstein A ladder of citizen participation,
and further developed in 1973 by Brager and Specht Community
Organizing. The ladder of participation is presented on
page 3, Section
1 of the resource guide
Improving health services through consumer participation (IHS)
(see link below).
Clarifying the ideas and assumptions
that are guiding your practice of participation is an essential
undertaking because participation can operate at different
levels and be motivated by contradictory intentions. Agendas
are varied. Consumers can demand participation for a range
of reasons that may or may not be similar to what an organisation
has in mind. (p3, IHS)
Supporting Consumers
It is vital for the sustainability
of any consumer participation process to ensure that consumers
will be supported. The outcomes your organisation gains
from consumer participation depends in part on the investment
it is prepared to make in encouraging and supporting consumers
to go on providing the inputs you are seeking. One way to
enhance that investment is to identify the constraints to
participation for consumers and ensure that your planning
and implementation strategies include means to overcome
them. ( p14.IHS)
The directives from government,
at both federal and state level, to incorporate consumer
participation into the health system's decision making processes
has raised many issues. One of these is whether consumer
representatives should be paid remuneration for their participation.
The following article by Spink presents the arguments for
and against payment, whilst the article by Walker and Wohlers
presents examples where organisations have made to consumers,
carers and community representatives.
To
pay or not to pay that is the question (Spink)
A
model of payment to consumers, carers and community representatives
(Walker and Wohlers)
Potential constraints plus enabling
factors are provided in Improving health services through
consumer participation Section
4.
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