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With more than 160,000 carers in Ireland, there is a considerable need to provide support and coping strategies to reduce the burden of care on both the individual and the economy. Government policies are increasingly involving carers within health services, as they provide real‐life insights into the needs of service users and carers. Further, healthcare professionals and carers can benefit from training delivered by the carers themselves.The current report was a highly successful initiative where carers and professionals from both sides of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland worked together effectively to deliver an 11‐week programme of support to carers of those with mental health problems. This innovative initiative aimed to achieve health gain and social well‐being in the border areas, as well as to build constructive partnerships. The participants were relatively inexperienced in delivering training prior to the training course, but acquired the skills and knowledge needed with the help of a detailed training manual and three follow‐up supervision days.The training trainers' course and subsequent caring for carers programme elivered by carers from both sides of the border were successful initiatives in bringing together people from both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland, and in linking them with people from the Republic of Ireland.

The purpose of this paper is to build a theoretical model of how and what clinical psychologists learn from service user and carer involvement in their training.

A qualitative research design was adopted, and verbatim transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 clinical psychologists were analysed using grounded theory methodology.

Findings indicated that clinical psychologists learned from service user and carer involvement in a variety of ways and a preliminary model was proposed, encompassing four main categories: “mechanisms of learning”, “relational and contextual factors facilitating learning”, “relational and contextual factors hindering learning” and “impact”.

Further research is required to establish to what extent the current findings may be transferrable to learning from service user and carer involvement in the context of educating professionals from other disciplines. Additionally, participants had limited experiences of carer involvement, and more research in this area specifically would be useful.

This study advocates for service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training, and specific recommendations are discussed, including service user perspectives.

Service user and carer involvement has become mandatory in Health Care Professional Council-approved training programmes for mental health professionals, yet if and how learning occurs is poorly understood in this context. This study makes an important contribution in evaluating outcomes of service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training by advancing theoretical understanding of the learning processes involved. The authors are unaware of similar work.

This paper aims to describe the challenges and rewards of service user and carer involvement in clinical psychology training as experienced in one training centre.

After outlining the major challenges of involvement in higher education and in clinical psychology training, the paper describes the work carried out by the authors. Members of the service user and carer advisory group Salomons Advisory Group of Experts by Experience (SAGE) recount their experiences of working with them in clinical psychology and Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) training. The challenges of inclusion and specific approaches that are used to work with these are explored.

Members of SAGE have experienced their contributions to the work in positive ways. However, inclusion in this context requires everyone involved to fully acknowledge the social and historical barriers in order to work together to overcome them.

Some of the approaches to meeting the challenges of inclusion in doctoral level clinical training may be applicable in other places.

In the authors' experience, true inclusion means openness to the authoritative voices of people not normally viewed as educators. A parallel question is the degree to which professionals feel safe to admit to service user experience or to draw upon other aspects of their personhood while working professionally. This may be crucial for successful partnership.

The authors are still on this journey of inclusion, and hope that by sharing some of their experiences of its complexities that they may help illuminate some elements of others' journeys.

This article highlights the importance of information‐sharing in mental health care and in particular the difficulties that can follow when practitioners do not perceive lay carers as ‘partners in care’. The findings of a survey, in which views were sought on poor information‐sharing as a barrier to engagement in mental health services, are reported. The authors conclude with a number of recommendations on improving the way information is shared.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of a training package for service users and carers with an interest in NHS health and social care research. It demonstrates how the developers used their unique experience and expertise as service users and carers to inform their work.

Service users and carers, NHS Research and Development Forum working group members, supported by health professionals, identified a need for research training that was tailored to other service user and carer needs. After reviewing existing provision and drawing on their training and support experience, they developed a training package. Sessions from the training package were piloted, which evaluated positively. In trying to achieve programme accreditation and training roll-out beyond the pilots, the group encountered several challenges.

The training package development group formed good working relationships and a co-production model that proved sustainable. However, challenges were difficult to overcome owing to external factors and financial constraints.

Lessons learnt by the team are useful for other service users and carer groups working with health service professionals. Training for service users and carers should be designed to meet their needs; quality and consistency are also important. The relationships between service user and carer groups, and professionals are important to understanding joint working. Recognising and addressing challenges at the outset can help develop strategies to overcome challenges and ensure project success.

The training package was developed by service users and carers for other service users and carers. Their unique health research experience underpinned the group’s values and training development.

The purpose of this audit was to explore the experiences of 42 professionals trained over a three‐year period as trainers in behavioural family therapy. Trainers completed a questionnaire designed to explore their motivations, frustrations, sources of support and benefits they experienced through involvement with the Meriden Family Programme. Quasi‐qualitative, thematic analyses were performed on the data. The audit found numerous intrinsic motivations for being a trainer, as well as a wide range of benefits, including belief in the approach, wanting to help families, enjoyment of teaching and professional development. Frustrations encountered were disinterest of staff, lack of support and restrictions on the trainers' role. Trainers were resourceful and used various solutions to overcome these. Recommendations are made on how to manage and maintain enthusiasm and support of trainers, or other family work champions.

The training of future mental health professionals offers one avenue of change to improve service user and carer involvement in mental health services. This study looked at experiences of trainees on the University of Surrey's Clinical Psychology Doctorate programme in involving service users and carers on training placements. Twenty trainees completed a self‐report semistructured questionnaire providing qualitative data that were analysed using thematic analysis. A number of benefits of service user and carer involvement in training were identified as well as practical considerations, including factors that might facilitate or limit such involvement on training placements. It is intended that the findings will prove useful to others involved with the training of mental health professionals.

The Care Programme Approach (CPA) is the fundamental framework for supporting the care and treatment of individuals with severe and complex mental health needs. National consultations with stakeholders (Department of Health, 2006) identified a lack of consistency in the implementation of the CPA across England, informed fresh guidance (Department of Health, 2008a) and highlighted the need for a valid and flexible training initiative to support the workforce in this important aspect of their practice. In response, a partnership team was commissioned by the Department of Health to design and disseminate such a learning resource. This paper details the first impressions of this resource from those who requested the materials and subsequently responded with an online evaluation questionnaire (n=27).These early responses demonstrate that the CPA learning resource is viewed by respondents as flexible, easy‐to‐use and comprehensive. In addition, DVD narratives of professionals, service users and carers' experiences of CPA in adult mental health services were identified as valuable elements of the resource as they assist trainers in the illustration of critical themes. Further results explore its utility in the training environment and highlight flexibility of delivery as an important feature. This enables the resource to be integrated with existing training materials or to guide the development of new training initiatives. As further evaluations are collected and analysed, they will feed into a process of incremental improvement of the learning package to ensure that it meets the requirements of the multidisciplinary workforce.

Carers of people with mental health problems present with high levels of burden, poor mental well-being and feelings of disempowerment by mental health services. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether providing a psychoeducation skill programme for carers would lead to an improvement of mental well-being, reduce the levels of burden that carers sometimes feel while caring for someone with mental illness and also to increase empowerment. This paper provides a service evaluation study of an innovative carer-led psychoeducational intervention that was undertaken.

This programme was initiated and led by a carer who had experienced a lack of service provision to support carers and families in understanding and caring for a relative with severe and enduring mental health diagnoses. A model of co-production was adopted with the carer who led this initiative working closely with an occupational therapist and consultant psychologist in its development and delivery. Data were collected to measure the impact of the training at five different time points. The measures employed to measure outcomes were the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, the Burden Assessment Scale and Family Empowerment Scale.

Results indicated improved well-being, reduced burden and increased family empowerment in carers who completed this peer-led carer initiative psychoeducational programme.

This service evaluation study was conducted in a single site and in the site in which it was developed. The carer consultant who led this evaluation and development of the intervention was also the peer worker who delivered the interventions. Hence, the authors are unable to ascertain if the results reported are unique to the individual peer worker. The transferability of this programme and generalisability of the result should therefore be treated with caution and further replication of this model and research is required. This would be beneficial to be conducted in an alternative site from where it was developed, delivered by different facilitators and include a control group.

The evidence from this study indicates that carers are able and willing to attend a group psychoeducational programme. A high number of referrals to the programme in a relatively short timeframe indicates that there is significant demand for such a service. The implementation of the programme is relatively straightforward. The key challenges for practical implementation are to have the right carer to lead and deliver the programme and the right support system in place for them (financial and supervision). Co-production also is not without challenges, the peer worker and occupational staff need to ensure that mutually valued and respected working relationship should develop.

This is the first evaluation of the impact of a carer-led psychoeducation intervention for carers of people with mental health difficulties in secondary mental health services.