Who Is A Consumer?

THE FAMILY CONNECTION of ST. JOSEPH COUNTY

Family Involvement

Lessons Learned: I. THE BASIC QUESTIONS

WHO IS A CONSUMER?

WHO IS A CONSUMER?

A person who is in need of, is currently using, or previously has used a particular service or resource brings an important consumer perspective to the planning and decision making process.

It is interesting that with all the focus on consumer participation, there appears to be little consensus on just who a consumer is. Responses from a survey of Step Ahead council members show a wide range of definitions, from "any citizen" and "someone who trades something of value for something of equal or greater value" to "any county resident in need of a service provided by a Step Ahead participant," "any person that has their life impacted on or receives services from a specific entity that provides the service," and "anyone who lives in our county who has children." While the state has never clearly defined a consumer in regards to Step Ahead, a current loose definition that is being used is "children and families."

First Steps, because of its focus on the special needs child and family, has a narrower focus of consumer. Therefore, within the Interagency Executive Council (IEC), which is the oversight council for First Steps in St. Joseph County, perceptions of who is a consumer are somewhat more consistent, from "anyone who has used any part of the First Steps system," to "parents, grandparents, foster parents and guardians of children with special needs who make use of available programs," to "an individual who is experiencing first hand services directly." One member also pointed to service providers as "secondary consumers" who may need "assistance, training and support to make them better able to meet the needs of the primary consumers."

Simply put, consumers use services or resources. Another way of defining consumers comes from Gray (1989). She identifies two groups of stakeholders who need to be present in a collaborative process: those who are the experts and those who will be affected by the consequences. At times, consumers may actually fit into either or both of these categories. Emery (1989) suggests that only people who have a legitimate material interest should have input into decision making. In other words, those who may in some way be affected by the decision. On the other hand, one participant in our project stressed the importance of including consumers who are not currently using services, but who have used services in the past, because she felt there may be a reluctance among some consumers who currently receive services to "bite the hand that feeds them." Those who are no longer dependent on services are more free to criticize or challenge the system.

Kretzmann and McKnight (1994) bring up an interesting point in their discussion about community-building. "Unfortunately, in some communities local residents have come to mistakenly believe they can build their community by an inventory of deficiencies. The common name for this deficiency inventory is a 'needs survey.' It is basically an effort to count up the emptiness in an individual or a neighborhood. The problem is that this information is not useful for community-building because it deals with people as potential clients and consumers. To be powerful, a community must have people who are citizens and producers" (p. 14). From this perspective, it would seem that using the label of "consumer" relegates a person to a receiving position and thus makes it difficult to also appreciate and support what that person has to give. Perhaps our consumers had a sense of this when they had the following dialogue.

"Consumer--I hate that word."

"Why did they pick that name?"

"It's in--PC."

"It sounds very cold."

Sometimes providers attempt to wear both a parent and a professional hat at the same meeting. While, technically speaking, anyone who is a parent might also be considered a consumer, wearing two hats in the same meeting doesn't appear to work well. The difficulty is that when a person is in attendance at a meeting because of his or her professional position, the parent perspective gets superseded by the professional role. Consumers are especially sensitive to this distinction. Although our work in the area of consumer involvement stems directly from our experience as parents, the consumers in our project clearly labeled us as professionals:

"Ann and Sue--you put more of your professional hat on because that's what you're here to do, and so things that, if you were sitting here as a parent would normally pop in your head aren't doing it."

At times, a parent's involvement may lead to employment or a leadership role. This is a natural and desirable outcome of consumer involvement. Once "in the system" for a period of time, however, that parent/professional is at risk of losing legitimacy as a consumer with other consumers.

"One of the problems when you get involved in official stuff is that you start acting like an official instead of a parent and I think it gets very complicated-parents lose the parent perspective and start wearing their professional hat."

" . . . [One of the other consumers] said I was more than just a parent and that it made her feel very funny, so I've learned from that--since then, I am very careful to say 'parent' because I think they need to feel like there's more of us than of them so we can get that bond going together . . . "

Copyright 1994 by Sue Christensen and Ann Rosen. This report is based on learnings from the Step Ahead/First Steps Consumer Involvement Project which was conducted for the Indiana Bureau of Child Development, Division of Family and Children by The Family Connection of St. Joseph County, Inc., 132 N. Lafayette Blvd., South Bend IN 46601 - 219-237-9740. The report may be copied in part or in whole to further advance the involvement of parent consumers in agency and coalition planning and decision-making, providing credit is given to the authors and The Family Connection of St. Joseph County, Inc.

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