OCD Action : Cliff Snelling – Carer Representative - The national UK charity providing support and information to anybody affected by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

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Cliff Snelling – Carer Representative

Cliff has completed an MBA at the University of Leicester and has spent most of his career in local government where he was responsible for emergency or disaster planning for events ranging from natural and man-made disasters such as flooding, major industrial accidents and terrorist attack such as the recent London bombings. He pioneered many of the techniques used in emergency planning today including the introduction of plans specifically to recognise and facilitate appropriate care for people experiencing post traumatic stress resulting from a disaster and for those, such as OCD sufferers, with special needs. The latter was directly attributable to his son being a victim of serious flooding and observing the lack of understanding the emergency services have for people with mental health problems.

Cliff was invited to be the carer representative on the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) OCD Guideline Development Group. His role was to advise the group on carer issues, their feelings and experiences including carer needs and the nature and availability of services and how they should be offered. To get as much up to date information from as wide a range of families and carers as possible he undertook a study into the effect on the families and carers of people with OCD. The study sought to describe the experiences and feelings of carers and to outline their needs, which as far as possible, were described in the terms of the carers. Previous studies have looked at the effect on families from a clinical perspective but this study sought to describe the current situation for carers as they see it. A number of individual testimonies were also collected to give a more detailed description of carer experiences in order to convey the extent of distress and suffering and the effect on other family members and on family life.

Click here to view the complete document. Click here to see the NICE Guideline.

Cliff is in the “pool” of Service User Representatives for the NHS National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme (HTA) where he frequently assesses topics for research and treatment into OCD and also “referees” applications for research funding. He sits on the HTA Mental Health Research network OCD Group and is also a Lay Member of the NHS National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Technical Appraisal Committee.