What is public involvement?
Public involvement in research is different to participation in research. Public involvement is when people with lived experience of the research topic directly shape the research by advising, designing, guiding or carrying out the research alongside, or as part of, the research team. This keeps the research relevant to the people it will impact and ensures the work can be applied to real-world settings.
Public involvement at McPin
We create work that supports meaningful, inclusive and safe involvement of people with lived experience of mental health issues. We can collaborate as either a partner organisation or patient and public involvement (PPI) lead co-applicant to help develop bespoke public involvement plans and budget. We can also help deliver those plans if a bid is successful. Our involvement work includes both young people and adults.
McPin, along with other health, research and social care bodies, joined in a pledge to improve public involvement in research. You can find the full Shared Commitment to Public Involvement in Health and Social Care Research statement and McPin’s own statement here.
Public involvement: How can we work together?
Our team specialises in involving people with lived experience of mental health issues in research. One way we do this is through setting up and working with lived experience advisory panels, or LEAPs. We often recruit LEAP members via the McPin Involvement Network – a community of people with lived experience of mental health issues who are keen to help shape mental health research.
If you are interested in working with young people on your project, please see our Young People Involvement section below.
Here are some of the ways we can work with you on a project:
- Collaborate as either a partner organisation or Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) lead co-applicant to help develop bespoke public involvement plans and budget, and help deliver them if successful.
- Arrange for you to speak with people with relevant lived experience or ask them to provide written feedback on research proposals via our Involvement Network.
- Help recruit diverse groups of people with lived experience to be involved in your existing research.
- With strong links to our research team we can include peer research in your plans where relevant, or provide training.
Get in touch
If you have an involvement or research participation opportunity you would like to advertise to our involvement network, please download and complete the involvement network request form and return to us via email [email protected].
Youth Involvement
Our Young People’s Network consists of over 400 young people across the UK, including those with experience of mental health issues. To help with your project we can:
- Arrange for you to speak with young people about your research project by recruiting through our Young People’s Network.
- Bring your research idea to our existing McPin Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG). The group consists of 20 members aged 13-28 from across the country, all of which have experience of different mental health issues.
- Collaborate with you to build public involvement plans into your research proposal.
- Develop a project-specific YPAG recruited to advise on a particular project from start to finish.
- Provide written feedback by asking young people with relevant lived experience to review your research proposal idea.
Get in touch
If you would like to work with the McPin Young Person’s team on a new project, or speak to the McPin YPAG about your research, please fill out our form and we’ll get back to you.
If you want to recruit young people to an existing research project, please download the advertisement template and return to us via email so we can forward to our network.
You can discuss how the McPin Young People’s team might work with you on new or existing projects with the Young People’s team lead, Rachel Temple [email protected].
Resources for researchers
