Public engagement reimbursement

BABCP are keen to support members to involve people with experience of CBT in events and projects. We have developed a document: BABCP Public Engagement Review and Strategy [PDF] – produced in consultation with people with experience of CBT – which outlines our key public engagement priorities and principles.

Key public engagement aims are:

  1. Make CBT Understandable to all who need it
  2. Build a sense of CBT community
  3. Keep the people who are receiving CBT at the heart of all BABCP does

Key principles are:

  1. Consider how public engagement is embedded at all levels of the organisation.
  2. Reject tokenism
  3. Make participation practically possible
  4. Communicate ideas clearly
  5. Share resources about CBT with professional networks
  6. Work together with existing networks
  7. Use social media
  8. Actively address the lack of diversity in therapists and patients
  9. Build in the voices of people with experience of CBT to training

If your branch or SIG is hoping to use public engagement and would like to get in touch to talk things through please feel email us at babcp@babcp.com for assistance.

The BABCP Review and Strategy document has some examples of BABCP public engagement as well as some helpful resources from expert public engagement and co-production groups. Head office are also happy to talk to you about your ideas. The key area to work on is usually thinking through the “why?” of your public engagement. Once you are clear on why you want to use engagement then ideas about how to do this come more easily.

Reimbursement

Please also read the BABCP Review & Strategy document and the resources it signposts to help understand how we reimburse people for their time and what you need to do if you are planning to use co-production or consultation in planning an event, carrying out a project or on a committee. We have devised our policy with reference to the National Co Production Advisory Group’s writing on this matter.

As with any event or project which needs financial support, costs need to be agreed in advance, so it’s definitely worth getting in touch with us sooner rather than later to ensure there is time to agree funding for people to be reimbursed for time and expenses. This may need to go to finance meeting for approval (which meets five times a year) so this may take longer if a finance meeting has just happened.

Process of claiming

If you do involve people with experience of CBT in an event or project, we suggest using the following guidelines:

£75 for half a day or £150 for a full day, plus travel and sustenance expenses.

If someone has worked a discrete hour then they can be reimbursed £20. However most meetings involve reading beforehand, and so it is best to round up to a half day payment for involvement in these.

If people prefer to be paid by vouchers instead they can make this request and we can buy them Amazon vouchers or a book token.

If you are planning some public engagement which needs a budget (e.g. an event) this must be agreed in advance through the usual planning channels.

If this is an event this means submitting an Event Proposal Form and including provision for expenses and costs for your public engagement representatives.

If the project is not an event you can submit an outline including

  • the aim of the project,
  • the intended audience,
  • the outline of the project, and
  • project costings

This can then be considered by finance committee.

Please allow time for this in your planning of projects and please contact staff to talk the process through if you are unsure.

Reimbursing individuals

Once public engagement has been agreed you can reimburse people through the accounts team for the amount that has been agreed.

Steps to making an individual claim

  1. Please check with your consultee that they are happy for you to share their contact details with BABCP Accounts Team
  2. Email the accounts team at accounts@babcp.com and your consultee together, this should
    1. link accounts with your consultee and request for the consultee to email their bank details for a bank transfer to be made
    2. Include details of the amount to be reimbursed along with nature of the activity e.g. £15 for phone call consulting on public engagement strategy. £75 for attendance of a meeting up to half a day long, including reading for this.

If your project or event involves paying for travel expenses it can be really useful for the people who are involved to ensure that these are covered in advance. Please ask for assistance by emailing babcp@babcp.com if you face difficulties with this.