A total of 70 social care researchers and practitioners from across England came together in March for a hybrid event to meet and share experiences in building research capacity. The day was organised by the Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey and Sussex's (ARC KSS) social care capacity building team, who are the national leads for social care research capacity building.
Held at the Friends meeting house in London, the event provided the opportunity for the cross-ARC social care research capacity building community to meet and network together.
Stacey Rand, ARC KSS Social Care capacity building lead and Moderator of the national social care community, introduced the day with a talk focussed on research capacity building for the individual, the team, organisation or network. There was also space for attendees to reflect on their own research journeys to date.
Lily Trapp, Research Facilitator at Kent County Council, Social Care Fellow and Researcher in Residence, shared her reflections on her research development journey and experiences of developing capacity in social care research.
The Kent Research Partnership, one of six National Institute for Health and Care Research Health and Social Care Delivery (NIHR HSDR) -funded partnerships to promote research capacity building in adult social care, presented their experiences, including individual awards/fellowships to support social care practitioners, and provided insights and lessons learned from the project.
Dr Julie MacInnes, ARC KSS Research Capacity Co-lead, ran an interactive session for the attendees to reflect on individual skills development, using the Research Development Framework.
The afternoon session finished by hearing from Robin Miller from IMPACT, which is a UK-wide centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. The session highlighted the importance of embedding evidence in policy and practice, with insights and tools developed to overcome the challenges, as well as opportunities to engage with projects to drive evidence-informed change within services.
Initial feedback from the event highlighted how researchers enjoyed the event as a great way to network, generate ideas, stimulate discussion and learn from previous projects.
Beth Flowers, ARC KSS Academy Manager, said: "The Meeting House provided a really good opportunity for attendees both online and in person, to discuss the challenges they are facing and meet other colleagues. Dr Rand provided a great line-up for this first in-person gathering for the community."
Wenjing Zhang, Research Fellow, Kent Research Partnership, said: " I am so proud of the social care research fellow I am supervising. This was her first presentation in front of a large audience. It is great to see her research journey in action. The day has been helpful for new researchers to meet each other and hear about solutions to different research challenges".
To find out more about future joint research events visit our website:
https://arc-kss.nihr.ac.uk/
