Almost every research funding application will now have a section asking about involvement, be it “patient and public involvement”, “public involvement” or “user, carer, practitioner involvement”

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12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 1/8Musings about involvement in research…Almost every research funding application will now have a sectionasking about involvement,  be it “patient and public involvement”,“public involvement” or “user, carer, practitioner involvement”.The ﬁrst response for some will then be what does the funder wantme to write. For others it’ll be I will have an advisory group with onecarer, one user, one practitioner representative and they will meetevery 6 months. Some will slowly drift towards, what I’ll call,tokenistic involvement to keep the funder happy (or just to be ableto write something in that particular section) and hope it’senough.That’s not necessarily because those completing that researchfunding application don’t care about involvement. They might notfeel involvement works for their proposed study and the defaultfall back is having an advisory group. For others it may just be notknowing what does work.There are, of course, many conversations and issues aroundinvolvement: not least deﬁning it, how to do it well, whetherinvolvement improves the research or the impact from theresearch. These are, by their nature, complex discussions and todifferent interest groups raise a number of sensitive issues. Forme perhaps the diﬃculty with entering these discussions is the12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 2/8current lack of knowledge and evidence on what does work, howand the outcomes for research, impact and on those involvedthemselves.Yet, our learning from the SCEiP project suggests research needsto be involve relevant stakeholder’s to have an effect on policy orpractice. Trying to garner interest in research ﬁndings after a threeyear study is diﬃcult at best. This is something many fundersalready know, research that involves relevant non-academicgroups is more likely to lead to impact. So, we know that… it’snothing new… so why aren’t we seeing more of it?SCEiP activitiesTwo of the many activities within the SCEiP project includedbringing people who use social care services together to discussinvolvement in research. This also provided an opportunity foracademics, professionals, users and carers to work together todevelop their own research proposals for mini project funding.Becki Meakin from Shaping Our Lives discussed the ﬁrst activity atour ﬁnal conference last year(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/event/creating-an-impact-social-care-research-in-practice/). About 25 people gottogether, discussed key areas of practice they would like toresearch, and worked to develop a research funding application.Some of them were (at the time or previously) already involved inresearch studies; others had academic links or background. Thegroup met twice before submitting their proposal. A number ofissues were discussed in the ﬁrst workshop: some of thediscussion focused on what user-led research should be, questionswere asked about whether academics had to be involved inproposals for them to be considered robust by funders, and issues12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 3/8aired around the potential barriers that arise for service users todevelop proposals including the perceived lack oforganisational/university support for such proposals and complexfunding application processes.An ideas swop shop was also organised providing an opportunityfor academics, professionals and others to get together, discusstheir research interests and pitch a project application to us.Funding of up to £5,000 was made available for those projectapplications. One project pitched to us and subsequentlydeveloped into a formal proposal involved the Campaign to EndLoneliness and the University of Kent. The project – HiddenCitizens (http://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/hidden-citizens/) – drew together interests around social isolation and ledto a successful collaboration which Adrian Adams presented at ourﬁnal conference.Our key messages from the project have been set out before(http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/the-sceip-project-and-six-lessons-to-date/). The project wasn’t aiming to evaluateinvolvement or knowledge exchange approaches. We’re not able tosay involvement through one form or another works best, or thatco-production of research proposals is a necessity for impact.However, our aim was to explore ways to improve knowledgeexchange between researchers and professionals, and to test outways methods for doing this. Some thoughts about this follow.MusingsCo-production may, or may not be, the answer to a more evidence-informed policy and practice environment. To me it still feels asthough we need more evidence on this and case study examplesto review. In reality, given the nature of funding and of academia,12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 4/8it’s perhaps a way off. But as we’ve said earlier, knowledgeexchange can, and should, take place throughout a research study,and research proposals should be developed and undertaken indiscussion with key stakeholders to improve their relevance andsubsequent impact. Research of value to practice has to have beenformulated knowing what is of value to practice (and the same forpolicy). We’ve discussed before issues around expectations andcontexts, and ideally those need to be discussed and aired before aresearch question is formulated.It’s probably very easy for me to say there’s a lack of evidencearound involvement but most funders expect it, and co-productionis generally accepted as useful (especially for increasing relevance),so think about that in your future funding proposals.In a recent meeting a carer spoke about her expectations for a roleshe may could have in research projects, it was clear that shedidn’t want to be researcher doing the ﬁeldwork necessarily butfelt she had valuable experience and expertise on the questionitself, the design, interpreting the ﬁndings and so on. There aregreat examples of service users being involved in research – suchas service users as research advisors within a study on homelesswomen (http://www.inderscience.com/info/inarticle.php?artid=69777) and the QORU Public Involvement ImplementationGroup (http://www.qoru.ac.uk/about/public-involvement/implementation-group-piig/)– and others ofpractitioners engaging in research.We’re perhaps in a chicken and egg situation. Someone has totake the lead in identifying a potential research area (inevitablysomething they are personally interested in) when a call forresearch proposals comes out. With a short timeframe in somecases to develop proposals, they might invariably look to their12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 5/8existing relationships to develop a proposal. At the same time weknow it takes many months to develop relationships and itsdiﬃcult to do that without funding and without knowing iffunding will follow at some stage in the future.Perhaps my naïve starting point would be to say involvementshould be planned as best for the proposed project, but thatimplies the project comes ﬁrst contradicting the idea of co-production. In an ideal world we would have a vibrant researchculture in adult social care where such relationships exist to shareknowledge and exchange ideas, with practice, policy and researchcontinually learning from each others’ expertise.So what’s the answer?Well I can’t honestly say I know… but a few key recommendationscome to mind1. We need to be better at building relationships between research,practice, policy, services users, carers etc without these being tiedto a speciﬁc research project or funding opportunities. We shouldbe developing approaches that allow us to share knowledge andexpertise, and should a funding opportunity arise be well placed torespond to it. There are already a number of networks availableand perhaps we need to be better at engaging with those. Suchrelationships could also build from involvement in earlier studies –relationships don’t have to stop when studies ﬁnish. In doing so,we need to improve our understanding of each other – ourexpectations, our requirements and our reasons for being involvedin research.12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 6/8CommentYour email address will not be published. Required ﬁelds aremarked *Name * 2. A number of funding opportunities are time-limited. But thereare also open calls (such as ESRC’s open research calls) which allowfor proposals to be submitted at any time during the year. Weneed to try to be better at identifying and developing proposals tosuch calls to allow us to take as much time as needed to developrelevant relationships or collaborations.3. Research funders need to make smaller seed fund budgetsavailable to allow people to use these to develop their proposalsand collaborations – in much the same way as the NIHR’s researchproposal development grants work. Funders also need to be moreopen about what has worked or hasn’t in terms of involvement inthe projects they are funding.4. Those involved in research projects need to share theirexperiences – more critical reﬂection from both researchers andthose involved in studies seems vital.5. And I couldn’t end without saying… we need more research oninvolvement, co-production, what works and doesn’t and –perhaps a more objective evidence-based discussion around this.Leave a Reply12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 7/8Post CommentEmail * Website (http://www.pssru.ac.uk/index-kent-lse.php)(http://reiﬁed.co)12/07/2017 Musings about involvement in research… |http://socialcareresearchimpact.org.uk/2015/08/21/musings-about-involvement-in-research/ 8/8This 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.

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