We have a central office in Semington and local offices at Salisbury and Swindon, and contact with over 900 users and groups in all parts of Wiltshire. We are funded through service agreements with Swindon Social Services Department, the Wiltshire Authority and Wiltshire Social Services Department, together with joint finance for specific pieces of work. Membership of the Network is free and entitles members to free mailings and quarterly issues of ‘News and Views’. We also give service users information about opportunities to join with others to have their voice heard to change the services they receive – for example. Home Care, Day Care, Occupational Therapy services – to make them more suitable to our needs. Some of the ways we do this are by:

• holding meetings on issues of concern   • taking part in workshops to give our views    • taking part in the training of social workers    • participating in meetings as part of the joint planning of services locally   We find that by meeting together we can share experiences, lose our feelings of isolation and gain confidence to speak out. This enables us to work with professionals on more equal terms, and they can make use of our expertise as users. We reimburse users all their expenses for participation. Membership of the Network is open to service users and allies. By users we mean users, potential users and ex-users who choose to identify themselves. In general we are long-term users who are dependent on services for our day-to-day needs. We also have user involvement workers in 5 areas: North Wiltshire, West Wiltshire, Kennet, Salisbury and Swindon, as well as a specialist Mental Health User Involvement worker.