Wandsworth-Wide Forum
Mission Statement
The forum is a group of individual service, and ex-service users, who meet on a monthly basis. Our aim is to empower people to have a voice in the services they access, with the intention of developing a better quality of treatment and prescribing options in the borough. The forum is open to anyone who has or has had a relationship with a service in the borough, and hopes to empower all Wandsworth service users to live full and healthy lives, giving them a decent quality of life and allowing them to be active in creating their own personal pathways. Also through peer support and accurate information, we can enable our peers to make more informed decisions. All forum decisions will be debated and voted upon with due respect given to the democratic process, this underpins the ethos of the forum.
By gathering, collating, and sharing information we intend to feedback to local services. We aim to do this by developing good communication and relations with our Drug Action Teams, local projects, and organisations, and appropriately challenge them when the need should arise. We feel by exploration and debate we can redefine individual and local working relationships, leading to a more open and effective engagement between service user and provider. Also by encouraging providers to give service users a voice we can identify weakness in services or highlight unmet need. We also intend to interact with other service user groups and form good relations with them, with the intention of enhancing our position regionally.
The forum will welcome and support peers at any stage of treatment, whether it be before, during, or aftercare. All members may have as much input as they feel comfortable with at any given time. Under no circumstances are members to feel pressurised into taking more responsibility than they’re happy with, and can hand back responsibility to the group if the need should arise. Members may temporarily leave and rejoin the group as we are a rolling forum. However the group does reserve the right to exclude members should their behaviour be unacceptable (see Code of Conduct). Also the forum may hold sub- group meetings that may be by appointment only. Service user reps involved in the forum will be expected to feed back what the situation is at their relevant projects to the forum.
All travel expenses will be reimbursed on receipt of up-to-date tickets, and lunch and refreshments provided. The forum is however a voluntary group and all time and input should be given on this basis. The Wandsworth-Wide Forum is not affiliated with any one organisation or modality and welcome input from all areas of our community. However we do recognise our connection with our local DAT.