PPI for Bureaucrats – Administering the Five Systems

To see the other webpages in this discussion, click on the links below.

Administrative arrangements, ranging from name badges to equalities monitoring are hghlighted in red font in the tables below. Each one has been mentioned only once and placed in the most appropriate table, although they could have been mentioned several times in different places. The aim here is to show how the five systems resolve themselves into administrative arrangements and crucially, to indicate why each administrative arrangement is needed.

As mentioned elsewhere, not all organisations love bureaucrats, so these systems may not exist everywhere, or may be configured in a different way with different aims in view. Bureaucrats often design administrative systems to stop the worst things happening, and this can create a burdensome system that excludes people who are unwilling to submit to its intrusive and demanding requirements.

With these cautionary words in mind, the following material reviews the five systems and catalogues the administrative arrangements that might be set in place. Some readers may use it to review and set aside some of the bureaucrat’s demands.

Rights of the individual

Paying proper attention to the rights of the individual is the first of the five systems that are needed to administer a Patient and Public Involvement service within a research organsiation.

The lefthand column of the table below lists the seven core roles of Public Contributors and then suggests some administrative solutions that address the rights of the individual. Feedback forms help to ensure that something is done with the ideas that the Public Contributor puts forward; conferences are codesigned and place Public Contributors and academics on the same platform and side by side in the same audience; and the overall culture of the organisation upholds the rights of Public Contributors.

The organisation’s activities, mission and impact

The second of the five systems pays attention to the organisations activities, mission and impact. As the role of the Public Contributor expands from reviewing a document at home through each of the seven core roles to Co-applicant, so there is a corresponding increase in the need for alignment of the person’s contribution to the overall purpose of the organisation.

The introduction of a Public Contributor’s Register is perhaps one of the critical ways to ensure alignment with the organisation’s mission. Without a central register, each research team recruits its own Public Contributors and manages their involvement, despite the fact that many Public Contributors engage with more than one project. In the extremely rare event that an individual has to be stood down and removed from all involvement activities, this can be very difficult to achieve in a fragmented system (see guidance on How To respond to vexatious behaviour).

Legal and procedural compliance

Every organisation must give proper attention to financial audit, ensuring a safe environment, information governance and equalities.

Keeping everyone safe

Safeguarding is a major concern in all organisations, and the range of mechanisms set out in the table below should work together to construct a proportionate but rigorous approach.

Internal systems

This list has not yet included individual ‘casefiles’ where the involvement of each Public Contributor is monitored and recorded. Any such records will be subject to the General Data Protection Regulations.