Tineke Broer

Background Client participation has become a dominant policy goal in many countries including the Netherlands and is a topic much discussed in the literature. The success of client participation is usually measured in terms of the extent to which clients have a say in the participation process. Many articles have concluded that client participation is limited; professionals often still control the participation process and outcomes. Objective The objective of this study is to gain insight into (i) the practice of client participation within a quality improvement collaborative in mental health care and (ii) the consequences of a Foucauldian conceptualization of power in analysing practices of client participation. Design We used an ethnographic design consisting of observations of national events and improvement team meetings and interviews with the collaborative’s team members and programme managers. Results Contrary to many studies on client participation, we found both clients and service providers frequently felt powerless in its practice. Professionals and clients alike struggled with the contributions clients could make to the improvement processes and what functions they should fulfil. Moreover, professionals did not want to exert power upon clients, but ironically just for that reason sometimes struggled with shaping practices of client participation. This mutual powerlessness (partly) disappeared when clients helped to determine and execute specific improvement actions instead of participating in improvement teams. Conclusion Recognizing that power is inescapable might allow for a more substantive discussion concerning the consequences that power arrangements produce, rather than looking at who is exerting how much power.

This paper reports on an evaluation of a 'social participation' improvement project in a mental health care and care for the intellectually disabled setting. The main research question is how sociality (i.e. clients' social lives) was constructed and what consequences this had for the project and for the clients. We undertook a dual approach: investigating the predefined outcomes and analysing the improvement processes in terms of how these processes construct sociality. As to the predefined outcomes, clients' social networks were not widened, but clients felt significantly less lonely at the end of the project. In a bottom-up analysis of data gathered on the improvement processes, we articulated two ways of constructing sociality: individualization, in which clients had to verbalize their wishes (verbalization) and to act upon them more actively (enterprising); and normalization, in which a good social life was one embedded in 'normal' community. We argue that this (explorative) way of conceptualizing change corresponds with some of the quantitative findings but also brings to light aspects that would have gone unnoticed by using only the predefined outcomes. Therefore, a mixed methods approach in studying effectiveness is a fruitful addition to the quality improvement literature.

The objective of the present study was to explore how mental health-care professionals initiate, improve, and maintain client autonomy while improving other aspects of quality of care. We studied the different ways in which they approach autonomy and the dilemmas associated with them. As a methodology, we used the insights of actor-network theory, where concepts cannot be predefined, but are formed within specific situations, and therefore, should be studied by addressing the actors involved. Data were gathered by conducting ethnographic observations of national conferences of a quality-improvement collaborative and by interviewing actors involved in the improvement practices. In a bottom-up analysis, four approaches to autonomy emerged: (i) professionals removed constraints to autonomy and passed initiative to clients; (ii) professionals made an active effort to learn and support client preferences; (iii) clients were given opportunities towards independent lifestyles; and (iv) professionals tried to 'normalize' their relationship with clients to encourage roles other than those of client. The study showed that autonomy is an important issue throughout the process of quality improvement. Articulating the different approaches to autonomy and the dilemmas in these approaches contributed to reflection on the concept and highlighted the limits of the concept within a mental health-care setting.

Quality improvement collaboratives are often labeled as black boxes because effect studies usually do not describe exactly how the results were obtained. In this article we propose a way of opening such a black box, by taking up a dynamic perspective based on Actor-Network Theory. We thereby analyze how the problematisation process and the measurement practices are constructed. Findings from this analysis may have consequences for future evaluation studies of collaboratives.