In collaboration with the National Centre for Independent Living and the University of Leeds Centre for Disability Studies, Shaping Our Lives produced this review of current literature and practice around service user involvement, with a focus on how service users and user-led organisations have brought about changes and improvements to social work and social care. Such changes should lead to service users achieving the outcomes they want in their own lives, particularly in the areas of choice and control over their lives. This project was particularly interested in examples where change was sustained over a period of time and where service users influenced services delivered by the statutory and voluntary sectors. In particular, this review considers how policies work in practice to promote choice, independence and control; how service users can change or have changed and influence the work of service providers; how changes can be (or have been) embedded in organisations or institutions, their structures and processes; and what service users and their organisations need in terms of support and resources to continue to play their role.