Remuneration and Engagement Resources

The Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC)

The VCCC provides a range of documents that outline good practice when including consumers in projects and research. The VCCC have designed a variety of “Toolkit” resources that help guide best-practice consumer involvement. The link below provides a list of these resources:

Toolkit resources | Consumer Engagement | VCCC Alliance

The “Paying Consumers” resource is extremely valuable when considering remuneration and reimbursement for consumers. The VCCC encourages other organisations to use this content to guide and develop their own processes for remuneration and reimbursement.

The Paying Consumers Resource includes:

• Consumer Remuneration Factsheets for staff and organisations and consumers

The VCCC Alliance has created two factsheets to assist organisations, staff, and consumers with implementing remuneration. These two documents provide information such as:

• What is consumer engagement and remuneration?
• How much is paid to consumers?
• Implementation of documentation and records
• The rights of consumers
• Induction processes
• Remuneration and Tax

Read the factsheet for STAFF and ORGANISATIONS

Read the factsheet for CONSUMERS

The Consumer Engagement Model defines five levels of consumer engagement to guide the appropriate level of training and skill development, communication and remuneration.

The levels of consumer engagement are:

• Informing
• Consulting
• Involving
• Partnerships
• Consumer-led

 Consumer Remuneration and Expenses Claim Forms

The VCCC provides a Sample Remuneration Form and an Expenses Claim Form.

The Sample Remuneration Form includes prompts on what to write in each section, ensuring that documentation is relevant and completed in the correct manner. The Expenses Claim Form is for consumers to claim any additional expenses as a result of their involvement. Both these forms can be used as a guide to assist organisations with developing their own remuneration and expenses forms.

 

UNSW The Disability Innovation Institute

The Disability Innovation Institute is grounded in inclusive research where people with disability are involved not just as participants, but as co-creators of knowledge. The institute provides fact sheets produced to help share knowledge that is interdisciplinary, innovative and inclusive through research and education.

Doing Research Inclusively: Guidelines for Co-Producing Research with People with Disability sets out key benefits, principles and strategies that underpin the UNSW Disability Innovation Institute approach to co-producing research with people with disability.

Click HERE to access an Easy Read Fact Sheet version of this document

Doing Research Inclusively: Co-Production in Action, builds on the previous guidelines (above) and provides practical strategies for every step of the co-design process in research.

Click HERE to access Easy Read versions of each section in the publication.

 

NSW Health – Remuneration Factsheet for consumers, carers and community members

The NSW Health Remuneration factsheet outlines clear information regarding remuneration. This single page document includes:

• What is remuneration?
• Why is remuneration used?
• NSW Health pay rate and the payment process.
• The use of vouchers and gift cards.
• Tax and remuneration.
• Out of pocket expenses and remuneration.

 

Health Consumers NSW – Remuneration and reimbursement guidelines for consumer involvement in health and medical research

Health consumers NSW has provided detailed remuneration and reimbursement guidelines to support consumer involvement. This document includes identification of key terms and provides two tables.

Table 1 – Defines the levels of consumer involvement.

Table 2 – Provides a more detailed explanation of how the remuneration guidelines work. The tables include:

• The level of consumer involvement
• Examples of remuneration activities
• Payment rates
• Example of good practice for each level of engagement

 

The Purple Planning Book – Planning for Consumers and Community Participation in Health and Medical Research

The Purple Planning Book is based on experiences of supporting researchers to plan true consumer participation and engagement in research.

This resource aims to guide organisations and researchers through the steps to follow if they are planning to actively involve consumers in their research to create effective co-design.

The book covers information such as:

• Why you might want to involve consumers into the project/research
• What stage or level or involvement you want to include
• The structure and language of the project summery
• How will you involve consumers
• Who you will involve
• How you will access the participation activities or level of engagement
• Considering available time, budget and level of training

The Consumer and Community Involvement Program (CCIProgram)

The CCIP Program is an activity of the Western Australian Health Translation Network (WAHTN). The program supports consumers, community members and researchers to work in partnership to make decisions about health research priorities, policy and practice.

The program gathers a variety of resources that highlights the importance of consumer and community involvement within health research. These resources include:

• CCIProgram Honorarium Guidelines
• National Health and Medical Research Council’s Consumer Involvement Guidelines
• Cancer Australia’s Consumer Involvement Tool Kit
• NSW Regional Health Partners Tools for Consumer Involvement
• National Institute for Dementia Research Consumer Involvement in Research
• Australian Clinical Trials Alliance Consumer Involvement and Engagement Toolkit
• Cochrane Consumer Engagement Priority Review
• National Mental Health Commission Consumer and Carer Engagement: a Practical Guide

National Health and Medical Research Council’s Engaging Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in guideline development.