ABSTRACT
This chapter grows out of learning from our shared agenda and working together over ten years (since 1992) in promoting user involvement in social care to improve the quality of social care services. Ray Jones has been the director of Social Services in Wiltshire since 1992, a chiefly rural local authority and Clare Evans is the founder, former director and now president of Wiltshire and Swindon Users Network, a user controlled organization formed in 1991 and registered as a limited co-operative com pany in 1993. From this shared experience, we shall describe the growing user led context in which examples of users involved in research and evaluation of services developed. These examples range from ongoing informal research through regular focus groups, through involvement in particular parts of research to carrying out formal user controlled research and evaluation.
