Brief Report: User Participation in the Iterative Co-Design of Public Child Mental Health Services.

PURPOSE: Service planning should necessarily involve the community. This brief report presents parental feedback collected after a psychoeducational group for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and places these observations within recent literature on participatory co-design.

METHODS

At the end of the psychoeducational group, parents completed the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8) and were invited to provide optional free-text comments.

RESULTS

The results show a high level of satisfaction with the intervention, and subjective observations of interest were collected.

CONCLUSION

Collected feedback illustrates how parental input can guide iterative, user-centered improvements in public ASD services. More research is needed on what are the most appropriate means to integrate the experience of patients and their families into a process of continuous improvement that a public child and adolescent mental health resource should undergo.