Collaborative case report: participatory action research into using EQUIP to support community discharge

Abstract

Purpose There is a need to evaluate an adapted Equipping Youth to help One Another (EQUIP) programme for people with intellectual disabilities and forensic needs. The purpose of this paper is to explore a service user’s experience of completing the intervention as part of their transition into the community. Design/methodology/approach A collaborative case report was used. Following hospital discharge and completion of the adapted EQUIP programme, one service user with mild intellectual disability was supported to share their treatment experiences using participatory action research. Findings Findings suggest that while the adapted community EQUIP group can support skills acquisition (e.g. problem-solving), discharge processes and community reintegration, professionals need to maintain a person-centred approach mindful of participants’ complex emotional journeys. Research limitations/implications The design allows for tentative conclusions to be made about the service user’s journey and is not necessarily generalisable. Practical implications There is a pressing need to develop the evidence base for interventions offered in the community to people with intellectual disabilities and a history of offending. This report provides some evidence that EQUIP can be adapted to support this population. Originality/value This is the first coproduced publication exploring the experience of a service user with intellectual disability who completed an adapted EQUIP programme.

A systematic scoping review exploring how people with lived experience have been involved in prison and forensic mental health research

“…Within most studies ( n = 12), lived‐experience researchers were involved in the development of interview and/or focus group questions. Some went further, stating that people with lived experience were involved in the conceptualisation of the study (Crabtree et al., 2016; Erickson et al., 2022; Janssen et al., 2017; Tearle et al., 2020). Others reported that lived‐experience researchers were involved in applying for ethical approval (McLeod et al., 2020) or project managing the study (Forsyth et al., 2017, 2020).…”

“…In some projects academic researchers completed the analysis independently, consulting with the lived‐experience researchers (to review and verify) before finalising the results (Abram et al., 2020; Edge et al., 2020; McLeod et al., 2020; Yu & Hope House Men and Alumni, 2018). Other papers cited that the analysis was completed primarily by lived‐experience researchers with support from academic researchers (Desai, 2019; Perrett et al., 2020) or completed together (Crabtree et al., 2016; Janssen et al., 2017; Tearle et al., 2020).…”

“…Overall, we found little evidence of an increase in number of studies in academic journals in which people with lived experience of forensic systems had been explicitly involved in the research being reported. This was particularly notable for forensic mental health patients with only two relevant papers published in 7 years out of the 675 originally retrieved papers (Abram et al, 2020;Tearle et al, 2020). Vanstone et al (2023) found 314 health research papers (published in peer reviewed journals between 2000 and 2021) where patients were cited as partners; of these 80 were research relating to mental health conditions.…”

“…Three studies (Abram et al, 2020;Edge et al, 2020;Tearle et al, 2020) provided detailed information about the impact that the lived-experience researchers had on the research over and above describing what they did.…”

“…Four papers were explicit about the names of the lived-experience researchers (Crabtree et al, 2016;Edge et al, 2020;Forsyth et al, 2017Forsyth et al, , 2020, whilst others avoided specifying which co-authors had lived experience (e.g. McLeod et al, 2020) or used initials (Perrett et al, 2020), pseudonyms (Tearle et al, 2020) or group identifiers (Yu & Hope House Men and Alumni, 2018) for lived-experience researchers.…”