PPIE has co-leads (Professor Dame Til Wykes, Dr Angela Sweeney) with Professor Wykes leading until 2025 and Dr Sweeney, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) leading the second half with Professor Wykes as mentor.
The co-leads are guided by a group of senior staff and a new service user lecturer who all represent different research skills and professional backgrounds including carers and nursing, as well as a commitment to service user involvement. Line management of research staff and projects is provided by The BRC project coordinator.
Strategic management
Resources have been allocated to all the work of the PPIE, including for:
- Payment of Advisory Group members including for any travel
- Staffing for the coordinator and the research support
- PPIE research and evaluation expenses
Resources are distributed from the BRC Core facility, but there are also resources in each Research Theme to ensure that there will be support locally. The management of all these resources is the responsibility of the BRC Director together with the BRC board and delegated to the Service User leads. Resources are reviewed annually with specific reference to PPIE resources within each Research Theme. All annual reviews will consider the output delivered from the PPIE resources wherever they are held, and this audit will consider whether they are meeting the NIHR and local BRC strategy for PPIE, whether they are being used to increase PPIE capacity.
Service user involvement in governance including all strategy meetings and workshops, the BRC Steering and Management groups is via the leads for involvement, especially the senior lecturer in service user led research, Dr Angela Sweeney. Service user researchers led and published an independent qualitative study that looked in detail of the process of involving service users across the years of BRC activity and specifically in the BRC’s governance (Evans and Papoulias, 2020). This study showed improvements in involvement across successive BRCs but still some gaps. A new proposed governance structure was accepted and is being implemented in 2023/24. Service user representatives regularly present at BRC Conferences and meet twice per year with the BRC Director to consider the whole programme of research. PPIE also pervades our governance through representation at the BRC Board and Theme levels and oversight of our informatics platforms.
Programme of Activities and Research
Strategic Oversight
Service users have been involved in developing BRC strategy, future direction, and the funding application
Supporting research through providing resources
We host a range of advisory groups, as well as providing training and guidance
Monitoring, reviewing, reporting and measuring
How we will review and measure our success and impact
Public engagement
Engaging national and local publics with our research and with mental health more broadly
Improving practice with reflection and evaluation
Aiming for continuous improvement to remain at the forefront of PPIE practices
