The Wales Centre for Public Policy is partnering with Cardiff Council and Social Care Wales on a four-month National Institute for Health Research funded project to increase links between the council, public health, and academia. The project will explore the mechanisms, relationships and networks needed to support and fund high quality research engagement in Cardiff.
Mindful of the barriers highlighted by previous research, the project will begin to make connections between the worlds of local government, public health and academic research to enable a lasting system to be put in place.
Between November 2020-January 2021, this project involves three structured workshops and an online survey with staff in children’s services at the council.
Workshop 1: Where do we want to get to? (30 November 2020)
This focused on what success could look like, including increased research literacy, evidence-informed practice, reflective working, and research activity.
Workshop 2: Supporting research use (16 December 2020)
This will focus on the key areas of success arising from workshop 1, evidence on the effectiveness of various approaches, existing models of partnership working between the council and Cardiff University, and a discussion of what this means for achieving success.
Workshop 3: Next steps (6 January 2021)
This will build on the two previous workshops and findings from the survey to focus on the relationships, networks and mechanisms which need to be in place to take things forward in Cardiff.
Alongside these workshops, a survey will also run with Cardiff Council staff in December 2020 to gather views on relationships with academia and public health and to understand build on learning from the first workshop on what success could look like.
The aspiration is that this work will lead to future collaborations between partners.