A golden age of independence?: Service user partnership in a housing organisation.

This report describes the story of a voluntary organisation involved in the delivery of housing with care to, for and most importantly, with adults with learning difficulties. As a single case study based in a shire county, a ten year period is explored via documentary analysis and group interviews. The interviews were conducted with board members, including service users as members of the board and other key staff in order to illuminate epiphanies that have defined Involve Housing Association and to report the lessons learned from their collective journey over the given period. The report considers the development of community care for adults with learning difficulties post 1971 and the move away from institutionalisation. Themes are identified that both particularise the elements of Involve and also offer ideas for service user involvement in the future. In telling the story, it would appear that the period 1997 to 2007 represented a golden era in terms of both investment and service user engagement within health, social care and housing in England. Although the age of austerity has replaced the vision and direction offered by the recent Valuing People agenda the report offers a glimpse of a possible future which Mulally (1993) extols for a prototype organisation such as Involve. Based on a sound value base and social work approach which is in turn grounded in the social model of disability and mutual respect between the participants, it is hoped that history can indeed repeat itself and that the contribution and real difference that service users can bring to the debate will be recognised and celebrated.