Kerry's event evaluation -- Users

[Larry Peterson]

Kerry and all:

I just read the following from Kerry's web site - he announced it a
month or more ago but I'm a little slow sometimes.

Chesson, Rosemary.2004. User Consumer Survivor Refuser: Report on the
Event June 22/23 2004. Health Services Research Group. The Robert Gordon
University, Scotland. www.openfutures.com <http://www.openfutures.com/>


I want to recommend this research piece on an OST event.  It is not
"scintillating reading" (mine aren't either) but it tells and gives some
great evidence for an Open Space story to engage people in planning, and
I think that is important.

I appreciated aspects of the study, such as:
--Engaging "users" of mental heath services in strategy development for
the sector (they make the clear point that there is lots of evidence of
"listening" to users but very little of engaging them and OST does that.
--Participants were invited and supported to come
--There is both quantitative and qualitative research
--It gives an overview of OST from researcher's perspective - it
articulates what the researchers saw.  (There was more going on I'm
sure, but this is what they saw.)
--I liked the idea of a "Video box" at the event for recording people's
ideas for later use - others have suggest it as well.
--The evaluations of OST fit (from my experience) with this most
critical audience.  79% were very positive.  Some of the concerns were
things people could have chosen to deal with themselves, and didn't -
many prefer not to take initiative when they have been conditioned
otherwise, some prefer to focus on "ideas" presented by others and react
to them.

For number of year in Toronto and Ontario, we had a most active
"Consumer/Survivor Development Initiative" funded by the Federal and
Provincial governments.  They had a Provincial team with the task of
supporting the formation and development of social and employment
projects run to the extent possible by "Users of Mental Health Services"
- Consumer/Survivors was their preferred name for themselves.

I led a number of Provincial OST events and trained the leads of CSDI in
opening space.  They proceeded to facilitate a number of OST events
across the province in local communities as they developed an economic
or service initiative.  Audrey Coward led a Provincial event as well.
They were all about engaging folks in learning and strategy and were
marvellous!  The government did not sponsor an OST event for policy
development - too bad.  Neither did we have the foresight or resources
to do the kind of study fostered by Open Futures.

Leadership and funding changes have had their impact.

Kudo's to Open Futures!

Larry

Larry Peterson
Associates in Transformation
Toronto, ON, Canada
416.653.4829

 <mailto:larry at spiritedorg.com> larry at spiritedorg.com
 <http://www.spiritedorg.com> www.spiritedorg.com


*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20050414/5284fe4c/attachment-0015.htm>