I’ve been meaning to blog since April… I have 5 or 6 drafts of different blogs exploring some of the findings and themes emerging from the SCEiP project, and another few post-it notes with thoughts for other blogs

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12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 1/7Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it?(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Blog-cake.png) I’ve been meaning toblog since April… I have 5 or 6 drafts of different blogs exploringsome of the ﬁndings and themes emerging from the SCEiP project(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/the-sceip-project-and-six-lessons-to-date/), and another few post-it notes withthoughts for other blogs…It’s now August and I haven’t quite managed to ﬁnish those draftsand post the blogs (probably much to the annoyance of twocolleagues who dedicate a lot of their time to this website and theaim behind it, although they’re too kind to say so!). But blogging iseasy. Takes a couple of hours to draft a blog (for me and I’m notsaying it’s any good), a few more to come back to it later and see ifit makes any sense, work on it further, login to WordPress andpost it. And there’s excellent encouragement on this site(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/impact-tools/blogging/)12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 2/7too! Yet somehow I haven’t managed to ﬁnd the time to do this inabout 4 months (more if you consider our project ended beforethen).In the meantime I’ve been in meetings where some of the themesfrom those draft blogs have been discussed, and some of thosemeetings I’ve left frustrated that the discussion hasn’t movedforward (not for the lack of trying!) and I’m making points thateveryone should already know… until I realise that I’m expectingothers to know what our ﬁndings were and how they answeredsome of the points being raised without ever having put all ofthem down somewhere publicly. It’s not that we haven’t discussedthe ﬁndings (we held a conference in November(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/event/creating-an-impact-social-care-research-in-practice/) for example) or thatthere won’t be reports and papers from our project and the varioussubprojects and activities since then (I’m almost done on those!),but they were not necessarily out there for those participating inthe meetings to know about or consider before we met. It’s worseif they didn’t know that information even existed (albeit in myhead for some of it).We’ve spent a lot of time in the SCEiP project encouragingresearchers to share their ﬁndings openly with blogs being onemethod, not just 8-9 months after a study ends and the journalpaper is published (a minimum guestimate assuming the paperwas written before the project ended or the day after…) butregularly and throughout the research process. And no doubt theremust be instances when they themselves go to conferences ormeetings and feel their research has already provided the answersto some discussion points… but the journal paper hasn’t quitebeen published or circulated or they didn’t have time (or think to)write a blog on their initial ﬁndings (or couldn’t in case it affected12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 3/7whether a journal would accept the paper if ﬁndings had alreadybeen shared elsewhere). So they raise their ﬁndings at thosemeetings and aim to schedule a further meeting, or hope to ﬁndways to link back with those they networked with, to take thediscussion further.Yet if we don’t get the information out there and – moreimportantly – to the people who could use it, we’re effectively nothelping to move discussions forward – perhaps going as far asstalling them – which in turn means we can’t collectively create apositive impact (be it on wider discussions on knowledge exchangeor impact for social care research, or evidence use in practice, orthe evidence that commissioners and providers can use for thecare and support they manage, or policymakers could use for policydevelopments). At the end of the day then we’re still discussingthings and not implementing actions to address issues, andpotentially just going around in circles. Academic researchers doneed those journal papers for their own career progression ofcourse but they do need to ﬁnd ways of sharing their work beforeand alongside that in an accessible ways. We all do.We probably all agree with that… doesn’t quite address myproblem of not having ﬁnished and posted those blogs…But that’s then in the planning and – to some extent – the valuewe place on our activities. I appreciate many a researcher ﬁnishesone research project and then has to move on to the next one thefollowing day or not receive their salary, which in turn means theysubmitted the report to the funder but have to ﬁnd a way tobalance writing their journal paper or public output while workingfully on another study (or a multitude). We’ve addressed thisbefore – by putting in funded time to proposals to allow for theseoutputs to be produced (which most funders will not raise12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 4/7concerns with) funded time could effectively be made available,and by building them into the full research process they are notgetting stacked up for the last day of the project – but perhaps theday-to-day isn’t something we fully control and other prioritiescome up, or saying this that doesn’t help after the fact when aproject is already underway.At the same time I know of one example of a researcher whoseﬁndings were shared with a key external organisation who wantedto include them in a seminal report which may have led to policyimpact. The ﬁndings paper was going through the journalsubmission process so wouldn’t be published for a (long) while andthere was no output to cite. The organisation wanted to includethe information in some way anyway. So the researcher wrote ablog post and the organisation referenced that in the report andthe evidence clearly tied back to the researcher and their study.The blog post in itself was widely cited and picked up in a largenumber of media outlets with clear references back to theresearcher; there has been policy impact and the journal paper hassubsequently been well cited.I’m not saying that that one researcher placed more importance onthe impact of their research or the need to share it with others andso spent the time writing the blog post rather than any otherpriority on the same day(s) – and it was important to make surethe evidence included in the organisation’s report was clearly tiedback to research – than any other researcher does. In the last 4months I’ve tried to come back to the blog drafts I have butthere’s always been another pressing deadline to work on ﬁrst,and then another (and that’s  probably the case for other outputstoo). But for me it is important that those blogs do go up, weshare our ﬁndings (and wider thoughts), and we have theopportunity to have your comments and thoughts on them. Not12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 5/7CommentYour email address will not be published. Required ﬁelds aremarked *Name * least so that when we get to the next meeting or the next eventwe’ve moved the discussion forward, and hopefully have actionshappening not just discussion of what action should be taken.I’ve now revisited the drafts and worked on them further. They’llstart posting on this site over the next couple of weeks and I lookforward to the discussions they generate. Similarly the ﬁnalpapers from our work too. Progress!This blog was not in any way intended to explain myself or thelarge gap since the last blog we posted here (!!), but did get methinking that somewhere along the line we need to balance whatis shared, how and when to support progress, and to avoid thoseconversations with comments like “but my work addresses thisvery issue, let me give you a summary and we can meet up againto discuss” or “that’s great you’re starting this new project, didyou know of this interesting overlap (in that it’s the same) withmy own work?” with other priorities on our time. At some pointsurely the time spent revisiting the same discussions could bebetter spent on getting the outputs out and then discussing themfor those who can (decision makers, policy makers, people who useservices, carers) to take positive actions. Perhaps that’s me talkingto myself – a key lesson in looking back at the last few months!Next post early next week!Leave a Reply12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 6/7Post CommentEmail * Website (http://www.pssru.ac.uk/index-kent-lse.php)12/07/2017 Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it? |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/05/blogging-a-piece-of-cake-isnt-it/ 7/7(http://reiﬁed.co)This website arose out of activities from the Social Care Evidence inPractice project funded by the London School of Economics andPolitical Science's Higher Education Innovation Fund 5. The websiteitself was created with funding from, and is supported by, thePersonal Social Services Research Unit and the NIHR School forSocial Care Research.

Blogging… a piece of cake… isn’t it?

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