We had the final PROP2 event at the John McIntyre Conference Centre on the 21st July. There were nine highly insightful presentations from the practitioner researchers which really highlighted the variety of projects that were undertaken.
The day was kicked off by Catherine-Rose Stocks-Rankin, passing on some of her knowledge from the original PROP project and outlining the value of practitioner research in general. This was on the back of her and fellow authors winning an outstanding paper award from their previous work – see here to check it out. We then went straight into our presentations for the day. We will be getting the audio from the presentations up here soon.
The presentations were followed by group discussions on practitioner research, how we can tackle some of the challenges that were highlighted from the presentations, and how we can spread the learning and influence of this type of work.
At the end of the day we asked three evaluation questions and received a whole range of responses. Here is a selection:
1) What is your take home message from today?
- Partnership research is accessible to all and for all to get involved
- Hearing the research in other areas to improve things for carers and the community
- We can change the world with research โone wee bit at a timeโ
2) What’s been the most useful aspect of the day?
- Hearing of individual experiences. Having the fact relationships matter reiterated
- Listening to the practitioners getting validation of their own experience, skills and knowledge
- Really enjoyed hearing the presentations and getting practical ideas to improve practice
3) Anything else you would have liked to have seen?
- Info on PROP3!
- Maybe some of the people involved on video or in person
- Wider audience
Some of the messages were extremely positive and the audience seemed very impressed with the breadth of areas researched by the practitioners. Part of this was because of the focus on ‘what happens now?’ – this is very much at the heart of why the practitioners became involved in this project and it was clear that across all the presentations there was a focus on how the research was going to be spread and used.
Over the next few months I will be following up with all the practitioners to see how their research has influenced their work and beyond. The presentations may done and the final reports written, but there is a lot of valuable work still to be done!
Well done to everyone for getting through what has been a brilliant (and tough!) year.