The involvement of patients and the public has been integral to the MOAM trial and has allowed the project team to work effectively with this seldom-heard group. Specially trained User Voice peer researchers with lived experience of the criminal justice system have played a vital role in the project. From raising awareness of the project within the probation service, and meeting with participants to collect follow up data, to taking an active role on the Trial Steering Committee.

As a result of high levels of engagement, recruitment to the trial has been good and there have been very few participant dropouts (less than 7%). Data collection has been of high quality with no measurable loss of accuracy associated with adopting the peer researcher approach.

Peter Fonagy commented: “The involvement of researchers with lived experience as data collectors for a multisite national RCT within the NPS was unknown territory for the research team here at UCL.”

“Working in collaboration with User Voice to involve peer researchers with lived experience has enabled the team to successfully recruit and follow up over 300 participants with ASPD across 13 sites to explore the effectiveness of MBT for this population. The MOAM trial is the first multisite RCT within the NPS to adopt this approach.”