Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development.
Staff and service users involved in the co-production of the benchmarking tool were engaged in a series of focus groups and participatory inquiry approaches enacted in the course of scheduled network meetings. Data thus collected was subject to thematic analysis.
Four distinct themes were identified which were titled: Taking time, taking care; The value not the label; An instrument of the network; and All people working together. These are discussed in relation to recent theorising of co-production.
Effectively, this study represents a case study of developments within one region. As such, the findings may have limited transferability to other contexts.
Staff and service users can work together effectively to the benefit of each other and overall forensic services. The benchmarking tool provides a readymade mechanism to appraise quality improvements.
Despite a prevailing culture of competition in wider health-care policy, cooperation leads to enhanced quality.
The benchmarking tool is a unique development of a longstanding involvement network, demonstrating the positive implications for enacting co-production within secure services.
