Carer Involvement

FACTOR (Families/Friends And Carers Together in Research) was founded in April 2007 and is the Mental Health Research Network's carer Programme. FACTOR has been set up to involve carers in research and to make research information available to carers.

Some of the activities that are planned as part of this initiative include the following. 

• Development of a carer’s strategy for the MHRN 
• Formation of a working group of carers, academics, clinicians, voluntary sector agencies and MHRN staff to oversee this programme
• Organisation of networking events in order to identify carers willing to get involved with the work of the MHRN
• Linking the carer involvement structure to that of service user involvement in MHRN 
• Promotion of the work of the MHRN to carers and carer organisations across the mental health field 
• Raising of the profile of carer research interests at networking events and research functions
• Support for local Hub Managers who are responsible at a local level for carer development
• Production of guidelines on effective ways to involve carers for clinical academics and their research teams currently running studies on the MHRN