We work with both the voluntary and statutory sector. Our clients include:

Breakthrough Breast Cancer
We helped Breakthrough develop its information and education strategy. This included running focus groups with people affected by cancer; interviewing staff, volunteers and trustees; and running a web-based survey.

Breast Cancer Care
We provided ongoing support and advice to the User Involvement Lead. This has included support to set up a User Involvement Advisory Forum and the development of a User Involvement Strategy.

Carers UK
We are evaluating the impact of the training provided to carers through Carers UK’s Equal Partners project. This project seeks to support carers across the UK to get involved in campaigning, consultations and decision-making in the voluntary and statutory sector.

Connecting for Health
We worked with staff within Connecting for Health and consulted members of the public to develop a public engagement strategy to support the roll-out of the National Programme. This will enable patients and members of the public to shape the development of the IT systems, to have a say in how they are used, and to evaluate the final products.

"TwoCan demonstrated wonderful flexibility in a fast changing project and contract."

Karen Foy, Senior Public Engagement Officer, NHS National Programme for IT.

INVOLVE
We worked in partnership with service users, carers and researchers to develop a plain English glossary of research terms, we ran workshops to capture learning about public involvement in research and we put together a database of research articles which either review public involvement in research or report on its impact.

To view the database of research projects click here.

The Long Term Medical Conditions Alliance
We have compiled a set of three guidelines to promote and support the involvement of service users and carers in voluntary health organisations. We involved staff, service users and carers from LMCA member organisations in shaping the development and content of these publications.

"This was a project I knew I didn't have to worry about and I was right...TwoCan did a great job."

David Pink, Chief Executive, LMCA

Macmillan Cancer Support
We have provided extensive support to help Macmillan involve people affected by cancer across the organisation. Three recent projects include a project to define and then measure success in user involvement, work to evaluate involvement in primary care and a project to advise Macmillan on the best ways to systematically listen to the voices of people affected by cancer and make them count within the organisation.

"TwoCan make the work enjoyable. We work together to come up with ideas, it's fun as well as helpful."

Tony Berry, Director of Planning, Policy and Research, Macmillan Cancer Support

National Institute of Mental Health for England (NIMHE)
We worked in partnership with mental health service users and carers to develop a pilot website about mental health clinical trials. This site was further developed to become the ‘TRiME’ website. To view the TRiME site, click here.

The National Library for Health
We compiled a website with general information about clinical trials for patients and the public. We hope it will help potential trial participants make a decision about whether to take part. We developed this website by asking members of the public and people who use services what they wanted to know about trials. The site is constructed around their questions rather than what researchers want to tell them. Click here to visit the site.

"Everything I know about TwoCan suggests that they will be as helpful to others as they have been to me."

Sir Iain Chalmers, Editor, James Lind Library

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA)
We run workshops to listen to the experiences of service users and carers about patient safety and risk. Topics have included hospital cleanliness, dispensing errors, MRSA and the National Clinical Assessment Service. We produce accessible reports from the workshops to help the NHS learn from people’s experience.

The Open University
We developed a unit on user involvement as part of the Open University's course 'towards a model of health policy and provision'.

RAGE – Radiotherapy Action Group Exposure
We wrote the history of RAGE – a group of women who experienced terrible long-term side effects as a result of radiotherapy for breast cancer in the late 70’s and early 80’s. RAGE continues to exist and still offers support to nearly 250 members. The project involved reviewing all the documents from the time and interviewing a wide range of stakeholders, including RAGE members, doctors and solicitors. To read RAGE’s story click here.

South East Coast Strategic Health Authority
We recorded and collated the responses received as part of the public consultation on the ‘Creating an NHS Fit for the Future’ Programme in Surrey and Sussex, and produced a report summarising the themes and issues raised by the respondents, as well as their opinions on the different options and proposals put forward. Over 6,000 people took part in the consultation.

The UK Clinical Research Network (UKCRN)
We run two courses for the UKCRN, ‘Patient and public involvement in research’ and ‘An introduction to clinical research’. These courses are attended by service users, carers, clinicians, researchers and other staff from the Research Networks. To read more about the courses click here.

The User Involvement in Voluntary Organisations Shared Learning Group
The User Involvement in Voluntary Organisations Shared Learning Group aims to encourage shared learning about user and/or carer involvement between medium and large voluntary sector organisations working within the UK. Members exchange views and experiences in order to develop their practice and ultimately to benefit the service users and carers with whom they work.

We provide secretariat support for this group and produce background papers on issues such as the differences between user involvement and volunteering, evaluating user involvement and performance monitoring user involvement.

The Wellcome Trust
We hold a grant from the Wellcome Trust to work in partnership with a range of voluntary health organisations, service users, carers and researchers to produce two sets of guidelines. The first will help voluntary health organisations make decisions about which research projects they will publicise and promote, based on the views of service users and carers. The second will offer advice to researchers about the benefits of working in partnership with voluntary health organisations, and about how to ensure their research practice meets the quality standards set by service users and carers.

To develop these guidelines, we’re currently working with four pilot organisations:

• Asthma UK
• The Neurofibromatosis Association
• Rethink
• The Stroke Association