The Use of Carers’ and Users’ Expectations of Services (CUES) in an Epidemiological Survey of Need

Background and Method: This study surveyed need in a group of psychiatric patients in Gloucester, using a new instrument, the CUES. Keyworkers gave out questionnaires to all patients with psychosis in contact with specialist services. A total of 148 forms were anonymously completed, with a response rate of 37% of the mental health services caseload. Results: 53.5 to 83.2% of patients were satisfied and 61.5 to 89.6% expressed their experiences ‘as good as’ a normative statement across the 16 domains. There was mostly ‘moderate’ agreement between satisfaction and normative questions by Kappa correlations, although responses to normative questions tended to be about 10% higher. Extensive free text responses were subject to content analysis, demonstrating needs across a wide range of health, social and leisure areas, many of which were not directly linked to the adequacy or otherwise of psychiatric treatment. Conclusions: The results imply that the CUES may be of value at an individual level to aid in care planning, and also have some value in aggregated form to benchmark user experiences of services.