Breast Cancer Care

Charity Awards

Bringing people affected by breast cancer together

One of Breast Cancer Care’s key goals is to place the people affected by breast cancer, their family and friends at the heart of decision-making. But until 2007, user involvement was ad hoc, inconsistent and unmeasurable.

Three years ago the charity decided to formalise its user involvement process in order to increase user input, measure the impact of involving users in its work and ensure that services and policies are designed, delivered and evaluated based on actual rather than presumed needs.

By the end of year one, user involvement was included in all staff inductions a new Intranet section was created to include interviews with staff and users on their experiences of user involvement as well as methods and tools for staff. Staff were trained on how to build user involvement into their budgets.

The Breast Cancer Voices user involvement group are a mix of Breast Cancer Care service users and non-service users recruited through an outreach programme.

By the end of year three, the 640 Breast Cancer Voices were actively participating in shaping the types of services provided by Breast Cancer Care and how the organisation itself develops.

According to the National Centre for Involvement, normal user involvement levels are 10 per cent, yet Breast Cancer Voices has a monthly average of user involvement of 65 per cent. It also has a very high retention rate - only ten people have dropped out.

In 2008/09 nearly two-thirds of Breast Cancer Voices contributed to a Breast Cancer Care project every month – “one of the highest levels of volunteer activity anywhere in the charity world”, according to user involvement manager Vicky Lane.

Vicky Lane
User involvement manager
5-13 Great Suffolk Street
London
SE1 0NS
020 7960 3447
www.breastcancercare.org.uk
Reg no: 1017658

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