What is User Involvement?

User Involvement is a growing area within service improvement as well as within Higher Education Teaching and Research. Depending on the context, it is also known as Public Involvement, PPI (Patient and Public Involvement), and more recently PCPIE (Patient, Carer and Public Involvement and Engagement).

Who are UNTRAP members?

UNTRAP helps service users and carers become involved in teaching and research activities at the University of Warwick. We link up academics with members of UNTRAP and in this way facilitate the involvement of a diverse group of people in activities relevant to them.

UNTRAP members are individual service users and carers who are interested in research and teaching and also organisations who work in this area. The members of UNTRAP come from diverse backgrounds and have varied interests but they share a commitment to learning together and working in partnership. Members are involved at different levels, with some people getting involved in one-off events while others are more heavily involved.

What sort of activities do UNTRAP members get involved in?

Examples of activities, which UNTRAP members undertake are:

• Assessment of social work student work
• Small group teaching for medical students
• Discussions of research proposals prior to submission for funding
• Study collaborators on research projects
• Taking part in admission interviews for medicine and social work
• Being on Advisory Groups of research studies
• Involvement in curriculum development and planning