Review

What do users want?

COMMUNITY CARE: ASKING THE USERS
Gail Wilson (ed)
Chapman and Hall, 1995

To appreciate the wide ranging content of this book it is necessary to interpret the title in its broadest sense. It covers health and social services, embracing both physical and mental health, as well as community care services. Patients, carers, clients, and customers are considered users of these services, both as individuals and as groups, and in some cases one service provides the customers for another.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part, consisting of five chapters, covers a practical approach to user-oriented research. For example, methodological issues are discussed in chapters two and three for both quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative data can provide valuable information in this field if carried out rigorously and it is good to see that the technique is now being used more and covered in books such as this. The last two chapters in this section are more specific and focus on individual groups of users such as ethnic minorities and elderly people. The second part emphasises the service side and the practical aspects of carrying out user surveys, ie choice of research instrument, methods of data collection and response rates. In the third the emphasis is on the side of the user. This is the longest section, with eight chapters, and ranges from users suffering with medical problems, such as strokes, to those with learning difficulties or mental illness and the psychosocial problems of the homeless. The final chapter provides a useful summary and makes the important point that any survey about what users want or think is of little use unless it is accompanied by user involvement, partnership or empowerment.

As each chapter of the book has been written by a different author there is occasional duplication of definitions and information. This book is not a comprehensive text of research methodology in the field of community care. For such information readers will need to look elsewhere. But the illustration of the text with data and experiences from individual authors’ research studies provides a wealth of wide-ranging material. Overall, this is useful reading on ways to allow community care users to express their needs so that these may then be addressed by the services.