We have just finished our final training day in our great library location at Edinburgh Uni. I think we’ll all miss the tranquil views of the Meadows outside the windows… 
It has been a long road for all the practitioners since the project started way back on the 6th August 2014. We spent our final day going over the report write up and making plans for how everyone was looking to communicate their messages to colleagues (and beyond) and how they were planning on putting some of their research and recommendations into practice.
We also collected some thoughts of how the journey has been for everyone. We started off with 14 practitioners taking part, and due to various work and life circumstances we are down to 10. Credit has to go to all those who have managed to stick with the journey – it is no mean feat to balance extremely busy work lives (magnified by the current levels of change in many areas of social care) and the writing/thinking/reviewing demands of a research project like this.
I have had sneak peeks into what all the projects have been looking at and have high hopes for the great work not only contributing to the knowledge and evidence base of the research community, but also making a difference to the people that use the services of the organisations taking part. After the end of the projects, I will be following up with the practitioners/projects for a while to see just what types of impact they are making, with a shiny report to follow at the end of this year.
Next up will be our final event on the 21st July… details to follow in a couple of months.
Cheers,
Stuart