title: The UCLan community engagement and service user support (Comensus) project: valuing authenticity, making space for emergence.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop and evaluate service user, carer and community involvement in health and social care education.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Despite the high policy profile of involvement issues, there appear to be no published accounts of schemes that have used a systematic whole-faculty approach to community engagement in health and social care higher education. FOCUS OF THIS PAPER: The set up and early development of a faculty-wide community engagement project.
  
  
  METHODS
  Staff from the faculty of health in one University, local service users and carers and community group project workers and local National Health Service (NHS) and public sector staff.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participatory action research including document review, field notes, questionnaires and interviews.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thematic analysis. The emerging themes were tested by seeking disconfirming data, and through verification with stake-holders.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Prior to the study, there were examples of community engagement in the participating faculty, but they occurred in specific departments, and scored low on the 'ladder of involvement'. Some previous attempts at engagement were perceived to have failed, resulting in resistance from staff and the community. Despite this, an advisory group was successfully formed, and project framing and development evolved with all stake-holders over the subsequent year. The four themes identified in this phase were: building accessibility; being 'proper' service users/carers;moving from suspicion to trust: mutually respectful partnerships as a basis for sustainable change; and responses to challenge and emergence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Successful and sustainable engagement requires authenticity. Many problems and solutions arising from authentic engagement are emergent, and potentially challenging to organizations.
authors.affiliation: University of Central Lancashire, Preston, Lancs., UK. sdowne@uclan.ac.uk
authors.forename: Soo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Downe
authors.forename: Mick
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: McKeown
authors.forename: Eileen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Lidia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Koloczek
authors.forename: Angela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Grunwald
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Malihi-Shoja
mesh_terms: D026683:Advisory Committees / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003153:Community Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D006113:United Kingdom