Creating a collaborative and impactful research environment: community partner reflections on the DeStress-II study

Background: Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research can meaningfully improve the relevance and impact of research outcomes. However, research ‘impact’ is often only considered in terms of study findings and their wider implications for policy and practice. Less attention has been placed on understanding the motivations and experiences of individuals who engage in research in a PPI role, or any impact they feel this has within their lives. Understanding this is important, particularly in areas such as mental health where there is significant potential for power differentials in the research experience.The DeStress-II project developed a training resource for primary care practitioners to deliver supportive consultations with people experiencing poverty related mental distress. The resource was developed collaboratively with a team of Community Partners with lived experience from three regions of the UK. This paper presents the experiences of the Community Partners who were involved in all aspects of the research, developing and delivering the training, co-producing an online training resource and supporting the analysis of its implementation. We focus on what they feel helped to sustain their engagement, and the impacts of this at both an individual and group level. Methods: A reflective evaluation using data from two focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews with Community Partners (n=10). Results: Findings highlight the importance of extending the notion of impact beyond traditional boundaries of academic research to also consider individual and collective patient and public benefits of involvement. Community partners identified key factors supporting their engagement including (i) a dedicated Community Connector role; (ii) feeling part of and valued within the research team; (iii) the development and quality of relationships. Community Partners identified impact at a personal level, including growth in confidence and a desire to create a legacy of work that continued beyond the life of the research project.<bold>Conclusions</bold>: Understanding how patient and public involvement in research is experienced is an important element of research impact. Dedicated time and resources are needed to ensure researchers can create environments which foster and support positive personal impact when working with people with lived experience.</p&gt

Fifty years of ‘protocolization’. How are England’s child protection social workers navigating procedural gaps and promoting child-centred practice?

Fifty years after the establishment of England’s modern child protection system, the country continues to experience new instances of high-profile child death tragedies where children have been harmed despite practitioners complying with the processes and procedures designed to protect them. This practice perspective article draws from the testimonies of 30 current child protection social workers to identify what they consider to be the continued challenges to achieving child-centred child protection practice in England. It reports on the social workers’ frustration with a system that they see as ‘totally reliant’ on evidencing compliance with procedures, but also highlights several ‘strategies’ that practitioners employ to ‘navigate’ procedural ‘gaps’ and overcome practice challenges, to better promote the individual needs of children. This includes the use of discretion via ‘professional disobedience’; ensuring that decisions are ‘defensible’; ‘Seeing Triple’; adopting a common language for, and understanding of, risk; and identifying a ‘shared goal’ as a means of overcoming resistance. The article considers several implications that emerge from the social workers’ testimonies, including that there is perhaps ‘more to do’ to address underlying factors thought to be impeding individualised child-centred child protection practice; that there should be a targeted emphasis on challenging local cultures preoccupied with evidencing compliance with quantifiable ‘output’ indicators over time spent with children; and that further reviews of the system should focus on the strategies used by social workers to promote child-centred practice and on how these ideas can be better disseminated to enhance the learning and practice of other practitioners

Retrieval-Augmented Generation to Generate Knowledge Assets and Creation of Action Drivers

This article explores the application of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to enhance the creation of knowledge assets and develop actionable insights from complex datasets. It begins by contextualising the limitations of large language models (LLMs), notably their knowledge cut-offs and hallucination tendencies, and it will present RAG as a promising solution that integrates external knowledge retrieval to improve factual accuracy and relevance. This study reviews current RAG architectures, including naïve and advanced models, emphasising techniques such as optimised indexing, query refinement, metadata utilisation, and the incorporation of autonomous AI agents in agentic RAG systems. Methodologies for effective data preprocessing, semantic-aware chunking, and retrieval strategies—such as multihop retrieval and reranking—are also discussed to address challenges such as irrelevant retrieval and semantic fragmentation. This work further examines embedding models, notably the use of state-of-the-art vector representations, to facilitate precise similarity searches within knowledge bases. A case study demonstrates the deployment of an RAG pipeline for analysing multisheet datasets, highlighting challenges in data structuring, prompt engineering, and ensuring output consistency

Omnipod5 Real-World Data from the First Pediatric Users’ Universal Coverage Under the UK National Health Service

Background: Hybrid closed-loop (HCL) systems combine continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) with insulin pumps to automate insulin delivery through specific algorithms and user input. This real-world study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Omnipod5 HCL system on HbA1c, time-in-range (TIR), hypoglycemia frequency, and sensor glucose variability over 3 and 6 months in children and young people with type 1 diabetes at two National Health Service (NHS)-funded pediatric diabetes centers in North West England. Methods: Children younger than 18 years in two teaching hospital-based diabetes centers were started on Omnipod5 between August 2023 and January 2024. Sensor glucose metrics and HbA1c were collected within 3 months before Omnipod5 initiation and compared at 3 and 6 months postinitiation. Metrics included % TIR (sensor glucose 70-180 mg/dL), % time above range (TAR) (sensor glucose &gt;180 mg/dL and &gt;250 mg/dL), and % time below range (TBR) (sensor glucose &lt;70 mg/dL mmol/L and &lt;54 mg/dL), with variability assessed by coefficient of variation (CV) and standard deviation (SD). Results: A total of 144 children were included, with 46% males and a mean age of 7.1 years (SD 4.3). The cohort was predominantly White (80%), with diabetes duration averaging 4.4 years (SD 3.9). Before Omnipod5, 54% used multiple daily injections, 41% a nonintegrated pump, and 5% another HCL system. At 3 and 6 months postinitiation, there were significant improvements in HbA1c from 7.7% (60.2 mmol/mol) to 7.1% (54.4 mmol/mol) at 3 months and 7.2% (55.2 mmol/mol) at 6 months. TIR improved from 53.3% at baseline to 67.4% at 3 months and 68.8% at 6 months), and reductions in TAR, TBR, and CV were also observed. Conclusions: These findings highlight the Omnipod5 system’s safety and effectiveness in improving glycemic control for children and young people (CYP) with type 1 diabetes in a real-world NHS setting. Further research is needed to explore the long-term benefits and cost-effectiveness of this tubeless HCL system in routine clinical care.</p

Connecting generations: the ESPNIC mentorship bridge

Mentorship is crucial for career development in healthcare. This report describes the ESPNIC Mentorship Program, established in 2021, which pairs junior healthcare professionals with senior mentors to support career goals. Over four years, 83 pairs were formed, including diverse participants from various roles and countries. Demographic information and feedback forms from mentors and mentees were collected systematically via online surveys at 12-month intervals at the start and end of the program. These data were thematically evaluated to find important areas of satisfaction and recommendations for development. Participants from low and middle income countries were enrolled in the program as well representing 26% of the mentees (22/83) and 10% of mentors (7/67). Women represented 50% (34/67) of mentors; and 71% (59/83) of mentees. Key areas of collaboration included career development, research, international networking, and clinical support. The program emphasised a voluntary and non-judgemental approach, fostering a positive experience for both mentors and mentees, and Feedback from both mentors and mentees so far has been very positive. The ESPNIC Mentorship Program serves as a model for other professional societies seeking to enhance member support and foster career advancement in paediatric and neonatal critical care

Re/Imagining time, space and identity through qualitative narrative research with teachers: “These ghosts came back to haunt me”

I apply a critical theoretical lens enmeshing the concepts of haunting and performativity to explore how teacher identity is materialised through the sharing of stories within qualitative, empirical research, and how this sharing can be interpreted as a calling forward of ghosts that inhabit memories. This is accomplished through an analysis of educational narratives derived from twelve semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with teachers working in England. Inspired by the quote from a teacher which is shared in the title of this article; “these ghosts came back to haunt me”, the narratives offered are interpreted as haunted by individual past histories and experiences of education as well as the ghosts of others. This analysis is made to consider the implications of these haunted stories in terms of how they shape the ways individuals materialise their professional identities within conversations. I conclude with a consideration of how haunting can be understood as more than a concept or theoretical lens, but as a central aspect to narrative life history as a qualitative research methodology

The U.K. Youth Sport Coaching Workforce Report

Research shows that the coaching workforce in most countries is composed of a blend of volunteers and part-, and full-time paidindividuals. However, the exact makeup of this workforce across the youth sport participation spectrum is not well understood.While previous studies have sought to understand the coaching landscape, very few studies have focused specifcally on the youthsport landscape. Given the societal importance of youth sport and the positive contribution that coaches make, this is an area thatneeds further attention. Using a mass survey methodology, this study aimed to create a detailed picture of the current landscape ofyouth sport coaching in the United Kingdom. Findings show some similarities to previous workforce audits. For example, youthsport coaching is primarily a voluntary activity (62%)—yet, opportunities to access paid positions have grown. Moreover,findings also show that the youth sport workforce is not a homogenous entity. This signals the need for further research to gain anaccurate understanding of the needs and wants of coaches individually, and in their specific working environments, beforeimplementing any recruitment or development programmes