NGRF - UK National Guidance Research Forum

Dr Helen Plant, project co-ordinator Guidance Council/ NIACE is seeking examples of approaches/mechanisms that have been used to consult with service users.  The attached paper 'Developing National Forums for Guidance in Six Member States – Malta, Estonia, Denmark, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Ireland.' is taken from the report of a transnational conference held in Bled, Slovenia on 9 December 2005, as a part of the work of the National Guidance Policy Forums Project.  It is designed to help people think about effective approaches to consultation.

As Helen states in her introduction to the paper:

The importance of involving service users in the development of public policy is increasingly recognised.  Within the education sector, for example, there is considerable rhetoric around the need to respond to the ‘voice of the user’, and to put learners/users/clients ‘at the heart’ of policy and service development.  Yet it is true to say that this vision is currently more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and sits uneasily alongside a planning and funding structure that is essentially ‘top down’, created with little, if any, attempt to capture and reflect the views of learners.  The concern of the National Guidance Policy Forum project to explore how guidance service users could be involved in policy development and strategic decision-making is to be warmly welcomed.  However, it has to be acknowledged that there Is currently very little concrete experience on which we can draw from within the guidance sector to inform our understanding of how this work might most usefully be taken forward.

You can read the whole article from here, but more importantly you can contribute to the discussion.  The Guidance Council are seeking case studies to show how planners and providers consult with users and potential users of guidance services, and how this information is used to inform service development.  The case studies will provide examples of good practice to inform and illustrate their current research into how user views can be better represented in the guidance sector.

Send your case study in whatever format is easiest to you directly to Dr Helen Plant via the email given at the end of the report, and/or post a response to this discussion thread to share your thoughts.