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Peter's Rant about SU exploitation

Peter Beresford has a very pointed and valuable entry on his blog (click on the title of this piece to go there). This is my comment on his essay.

Well said Peter - much applause.

Do you remember me asking you about the other national network group at the SoL 10th birthday conference? Your answer was, in so many words: the more the merrier!

I was looking at the points in your text and thinking hmmmmm, why does this vibrate like that?

But it's so fundamentally sad because while we need to build a cohesive and concerted voice and shouldn't be criticising each other, the the people you talk about (and I and others say the same things in a variety of ways) are wreckers of user involvement.

And there are other anomalies difficult to reconcile. I'm currently wrestling with the incidence of members of local PPI Forums having conflicts of interests which compromise PPI Forum independence in the form of membership of the very trust they are set up as the forum for (see my PPlog: http://micoxpplog.blogspot.com)
From the outset I've been obstinately insisting that PPI is the best opportunity for the furtherance of user involvement this and last century and that PPI should be run by service users for service users. But close involvement with PPI reveals many active committed Forum members who act independently and in concert with users - the carers of users who, technically, must have a legitimate claim to being service users themselves. But then sadly (and I know there are reasons) there is this damaging divide between us.

What do you think?

Comments

Unknown said…
Mike,
There will always be single issue members joining Forums/LINks and they can be very destructive regarding moving forward with workplans. It needs a strong Chair person and regulatory powers to ensure this doesn't happen.
regards,
Neil Woodnick (Camden PCT Forum)
1 September 2007 at 02:01
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