This week the Connecting People study gained a new lease of life. A new researcher, Hannah Reidy, has joined the study to replace David Ansari who left to take up a PhD scholarship in Chicago in
This week the Connecting People study gained a new lease of life. A new researcher, Hannah Reidy, has joined the study to replace David Ansari who left to take up a PhD scholarship in Chicago in September.
Hannah joins us from Wandsworth Mind. She brings social care and research expertise, and a fresh perspective, to the study. I very much look forward to working with her over the next year.
We are entering the final phase of the ethnography in which we will be returning to each of the participating agencies in turn to refine our intervention model. Starting on Monday at BlueSCI, we will be continuing our observations of social care practice in its context to understand how people are supported to connect with others. We aim to consult on our intervention model to obtain feedback from workers and the people they work with before Christmas.
We are also starting to articulate what is required in order to achieve the intervention model. This will take the form of a manual. We envisage this to be flexible and not prescriptive, allowing for intuition and creativity whilst maintaining some parameters for the intervention. This will be completed by April 2012 when we will use the Delphi consultation method to obtain the perspectives of multiple stakeholders and refine it further. After that … well, I have to wait until contracts are signed before I can reveal what else 2012 brings for the Connecting People study.
In the meantime we have a new look blog (follow this to obtain regular updates about the study) and a new facebook page (please ‘like’ us!) to engage more people in the study.
Please do not hesitate to comment here, on the study blog or via email to me if you would like to share your thoughts about the study.