'Involvement' can be rewarding for service users and professionals when done well but when done poorly it can reinforce despair about improving services.
Involvement can be especially soul-destroying when service user leaders turn out to have got into their powerful service user roles by talking the talk while carefully not to rocking the boat when organisations involvement is poor/tokenistic.
Service user leaders might be willing to sell their soul to get into powerful/well-paid service user involvement roles but it's not only themselves they compromise; they set expectations with orgs that involvement isnt challenging & they disillusion SUs who do challenge.
If someone is in a powerful service user position but wont risk disapproval from professionals/organisation by challenging tokenistic, or just not very good, involvement practices then they've become part of the system really.
