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Practitioner Research Training Programme: Information Sessions
Photo by Samantha Borges on Unsplash.
The Community Knowledge Matters network and the National Centre for Remote & Rural Health & Care are co-developing a training programme designed to support health practitioners to get involved in research, with a view to supporting equitable practitioner-community research collaborations. We will be hosting two information & feedback sessions in March for health practitioners across rural Scotland to find out more about how they can get involved in research, and let us know what specific support or training needs they might have to make this more possible.
If you’re a rural health practitioner, join us at one of the following sessions to find out more and help shape a possible research training programme: Wednesday 19th March: 2 - 3.30pm OR Wednesday 26th March: 3 - 4.30pm.
‘Finding Out for Ourselves’: Panel Discussion at SCVO’s The Gathering
Earlier this month, Network Coordinators Lewis and Lauren attended SCVO’s The Gathering, where Lewis and partners ran an engaging session on Community Led Research: Finding Out for Ourselves. The session explored the value of community-led research and the benefits it can bring to communities, researchers, practitioners and decision-makers in achieving social impact and systemic change. With reflections from a number of different programmes supporting community-researcher partnerships over the past decade the panel gave insight into previous learning, including barriers and opportunities, as well examples of how people can be better supported and get involved.
Phase One Unwrapped!
We like to start our communities of practices asking people what ‘hats’ they are coming in with and what communities they feel part of. As we come to the end of Phase 1, and look ahead to the second phase of the programme starting in this year, we have amalgamated all of these community ‘check-ins’ throughout the past 18 months and the results are in!
In general, people are recognising that they can bring in their different perspectives into the network activities, that there continues to be a centering of communities in our work and that there isn’t a fixed binary between community-members and researchers, or other identities.
Building Systems-Based Approaches to Equitable Community-Led Research in Rural Scotland
Last year, we shared with the collective Diversci our learning with the Network around equitable Community-Led Research in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Lewis Hou, Science Ceilidh director and one of our CKM network coordinators, was featured in Diversci November’s community of practice. He shared learning from the Community Knowledge Matters network and the Ideas Fund programme supporting more participatory funding which goes directly to communities to lead research in Scotland.
Prefiguring Social Action Inquiry Residency
Network coordinators Lewis Hou and Lauren Pyott took part in the Edge of Tomorrow residency, on the theme of ‘prefiguring social action’. This was co-hosted by the Oasis Foundation and the Social Action Inquiry.
The residency brought together change makers to collectively think about what system change might look and feel like, and about what may be on the brink of emergence for the systems of tomorrow.
Edge of Tomorrow residency at the Haybergill Centre (Lake District, November 2024). Photo: Oasis Foundation.
The role of reflection within co-production
Our Communities of Practice (CoP) are regular sessions for network member to develop peer support and share learning around key themes of community-led research. We explored the role of reflection within co-production in our last CoP on the 21st of November 2024. We discussed what do reflective practices bring to co-production and some challenges for embedding reflection effectively in it, including power dynamics and inequitable distribution of the mental load of the reflection. Some remarks and considerations emerged during the session that are worth recapping.
Funding confirmation for a second phase of the Community Knowledge Matters programme
We are happy to announce that our application to the Ideas Fund to extend our infrastructure network funding for another 18 months was successful! This will allow us to continue building and strengthening the network, provide more capacity building opportunities for community-led research, and advocate for systems change that values different forms of knowledge, including community knowledge and that of people with lived experience. With this funding being granted, Phase 2 of our programme will properly starting in January 2025.
Wider Strategic Work
In November, we have been sharing our learning with the Network more widely over the last few months to help shape and make a wider impact around community-led research. This includes feeding into a new paper on ethics for citizen science developed with Young Foundation and UK Research and Innovation; discussions as part of the UK Participatory Research Network in Manchester and more internationally with Falling Walls Engage in Germany.
Lewis Hou has also started being involved in the Engaged Futures Group process held by the National Coordinating Centre Public Engagement (NCCPE) which is reimagining what a more inclusive higher education sector could look like. We will be meeting in the next few weeks in-person to start planning and so there will be more updates to come. We very much encourage anyone who is interested to get involved in the Catalyst process which is open to everyone.
Reflections after our last Community of Practice
Our Communities of Practice (CoP) are regular sessions for network member to develop peer support and share learning around key themes of community-led research. Our last CoP took place on 29th October 2024, in which we explored what the word Inclusion means from different perspectives through a Living Glossary exercise. Some remarks and reflections emerged after the session that are worth recapping.
Key ideas:
We need diverse and integrated forms of knowledge to make sense of the world
Everyone’s expertise matters
Research is never ‘neutral’ – there are always underlying values and ethical & political tensions to navigate
We are better working together and sharing resources to effect structural change
Researchers are not separate from communities
And what does this mean in practice?
An ethics of care and reflective practice embedded into our working;
Continuous feedback mechanisms including our member’s survey;
Embedding different engagement styles into meetings and providing information about what to expect. Asking to understand access needs;
Introducing “Information Sessions” to welcome new groups and go over questions and background of the network;
Intentional and strategic use of bursaries to enable access for the Gathering and prioritising under heard voices;
Developing inclusive safeguarding protocols around holding space to balance different needs.
Community Knowledge Matters feeding into policy
A public consultation around community-led action and stronger democracy was open from August 2023 to February 2024, hosted in partnership between the Scottish Government and COSLA. Communities across Scotland came together to consider what local governance that involves communities more meaningfully should look like. We held a conversation as part of CKM in February 2024 and submitted our collective feedback as one of the 166 unique responses received. Read our submission here.
The Scottish Government has published the analysis of responses. Findings arising from consultation responses in which the Network contributed include the importance of overcoming barriers to participation and a call for communities to have a funding model that allows them to take a long-term view and plan effectively.
In response to encouraging participation and community engagement, the Network stressed the importance of using language people understood to reduce barriers to participation. Regarding funding community decision-making, Community Knowledge Matters highlighted problems with current approaches, including short term and constraint-based funding, which make it difficult for communities to engage in genuine co-production and relationship building.
Study visit from Texas A&M University students
We’ve been engaging with other stakeholders and networks about the work we’ve collectively been doing over the past 18 months, including with a group of students from the Educational Leadership and Counseling Department at Texas A&M University in the United States. This study visit was coordinated by Dr. Steve Bain, who has been part of an international group exploring the ethics of rural mental health research globally, alongside our partner Dr. Sarah-Anne Munoz who has also been co-facilitating our Co-Priority Survey Working Group.
The study visit provided us with an opportunity to share and contrast our experiences of supporting community-led research around mental health between the Highlands & Islands and the State of Texas, prompting a fascinating discussion about the politics of distributing funding to rural areas, and the role that the third sector plays alongside government-run support services. Whilst it was encouraging to hear how inspired they had been from learning about examples of community-led health and wellbeing practice here, it was also useful to hear of some of the common challenges we are facing either side of the Atlantic, and start thinking about where collaborative efforts to combat these more structurally might be useful.
You can read a copy of the short position paper co-written by Dr. Sarah-Anne Munoz and Dr. Steve Bain, alongside other international colleagues, sharing ten principles on rural mental health research. This was partly informed by our own process of co-producing a co-priority survey on doing mental health research in rural areas, and our survey working group will be responding to this paper, with reflections from our own practice and experience.
Sharing learning around ethics with wider partners and sister networks
In September 2024, we shared some of our learning from Phase 1 with wider partners and sister networks, as we aim to help build a culture shift around more equitable community-led research. We took part in an Ethics Roundtable organised by our partners at the Third Sector Research Forum, and piloted our Participatory Ethics Toolkit at the National Impact Network: Leaders Forum.
Proposal for a second phase of the programme
In a new blog our network coordinator writes about the key learning of the first phase of the Community Knowledge Matters programme and the plans for a second one. We have been working on a proposal for a second phase, and have just submitted an application to the Ideas Fund to extend our infrastructure funding for another 18 months.
Network Member’s Survey
As we work on the next stage of the network programme, this is your opportunity to help shape Community Knowledge Matters and contribute to what it might look like in the future. Share with us what training and support might you find useful for increasing capacity and confidence in community-led research. What do you think our priorities should be and who might we want to engage with in terms of policy impact? This survey has now closed.
September 2024 Update
The Network member’s survey to evaluate and understand the impact of our work has now closed. Many thanks to all the people who filled and shared their thoughts about CKM. We will now work on analysing and disseminating the findings of the survey, which will help us to understand the needs of the network and set future plans for it.
However, the survey will still be live over the next few months as an opportunity to give any further feedback and we will continue to reflect on how we can implement your suggestions and insights. If you have any thoughts on what has been useful about the network so far, or what you might want us to do in a different way, we’d love to hear from you! Also, feel free to reach out at any time to Lauren (lauren@scienceceilidh.com) or Natalia (natalia@scienceceilidh.com) if you have any question, feedback or would like to discuss anything network related please.
How can community-led research enable more meaningful local decision-making?
This is one of the key question’s we have been asking as a network overall, and with that in mind, we have fed into the recent Democracy Matters consultation. This had developed from a recent Community of Practice, along with a dedicated conversation in February 2024 and wider discussions with this network and the Highlands and Islands Climate Change Community Network. Read the submission here and we’d love to hear your thoughts on the network!
The First Six Months of Community Knowledge Matters
In a new blog our network coordinator Lauren writes about the development and start of CKM. She reflects on the role that community engagement, participatory ethics and co-priority setting have played in the first six months of the network and what learning she will take into the next.
Join our Co-Priority Working Group
We are looking for community members (either as individuals or representing community organisations) based in the Highlands and Islands who are interested in co-designing and co-analysing a priority setting survey as part of a new working group. Application deadline: 28 November 2023, 5pm. This survey has now closed.
2024 Updates
Many thanks to all the community members, practitioners and researchers that collaborated to produce a Co-Priority survey on Doing Mental Health Research with Rural Communities, and also to all the people who filled it and shared their thoughts on doing mental health research in rural areas. The survey received an incredible 150 rich responses!
Our co-priority survey working group has also begun co-analysing the (plentiful!) results from this survey that we co-developed and ran online earlier this year, as well as thinking ahead to what we plan to do with the results including some potential co-written publications (in various formats). We’ll keep you posted as things develop and look forward to sharing the results with you soon!
Newly published Insight Report
Community Knowledge Matters builds from The Ideas Fund programme, which started in 2021 exploring how communities can directly lead partnerships with researchers around mental wellbeing to ensure that lived, professional and academic expertise can work together more effectively to affect local change.
The Ideas Fund, who are also funding this network, have published their first Insight Report (2023), exploring the learning gained from supporting community-led collaboration with researchers across the country.
