SCIE Practice guide 11: The participation of adult service users, including older people, in developing social care

Whole systems approach

Whole systems approaches involve identifying the various components of a system and assessing the nature of the links and relationships between each of them.

Whole systems approaches are a useful way of looking at participation because:

• Organisations must change at every level, from senior management to front line staff, if they want to achieve meaningful participation.
• Participation should become part of daily practice, not a one-off activity.
• Participation operates at different levels. There are many ways to involve service users in different types of decisions.
  (Kirby et al., 2003b, p144-145)

Wright and colleagues (2006) suggest that different elements of participation can be brought together in a single framework, like a jigsaw puzzle. We thought that this was a useful way to look at participation and will go on to consider each one separately.

Figure One: A whole systems approach to participation

(Wright et al., 2006, p12)