SLaM Membership

As I understand it there are now abt. 10,000 members. Is the way the membership is being organised the most effective to make best use of this? It would be interesting to get thoughts of members as to how they might like to see the membership organisation develop.

I'd also like to have info on the current membership profile - i.e. breakdown by numbers who are patients/users, carers, staff, and public.

Personally I would like to see membership organised around the 8 CAG's which provide the managerial units for clinical activities and academic groups. Service users, carers and staff could then be more closely involved in the CAG relevant to them, and a member council could be elected for each CAG by the relevant membership. This would seem a more effective and focused way of promoting involvement per strategy than only having the Member's Council which covers everything. If each CAG Council had say 8 members, then these could come together in period conferences with main Council and would enable a more direct grassroots approach than at present.

I'd also think that this would be of assistance to academic groups and clinicians, particularly as there is now duty to involve stakeholders and service users, and this would provide some structure to facilitate this on ongoing basis (rather like standing ethics committee instead of convening ad hoc).