Local Authority setting
An introduction to Local Authorities
Local Authority is all about meeting the needs of local people and businesses. Its role touches on every aspect of modern life and ranges from climate change to adult social care. They are responsible for functions such as social care, schools, housing and planning, waste collection, licensing, business support, registrar services and pest control.
As you saw from the timeline video the transition of public health responsibilities from the NHS to local government in England offers opportunities to make population health and wellbeing a part of core business, not only for public health departments, but of all departments in local authorities. Research has an important part to play in gathering the evidence needed to improve the health and wellbeing of the local populations.
It is difficult to describe Local Authorities (LA) because the structure of local government varies from area to area in England. LAs are vast with many different departments and every LAs divides their services differently. Here is an introduction to how your council works.
LA sometimes refer to their users as customers or service users.
The NHS has a definition of what Local Authorities are and more importantly the different types of responsibilities.
Examples of NIHR funded research with Local Authorities;
Licensing decisions by local authorities can reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions
Reducing street lighting doesn’t lead to more road traffic accidents or crime
Here the government describes the first ever investment for local authorities to turbo-charge research into health inequalities affecting their local area and the NIHR part in this.
Children Looked After
A child who has been in the care of the Local Authority for more than 24 hours is known as a 'looked after child'. Looked after children are also often referred to as children in care, a term which many children and young people prefer, you can read more about this. You can read more here about a case study on the NIHR Webpage.
Top tips for engaging and recruiting in LAs
Knowing who to talk to can be difficult, for instance with a homeless research study you may need to speak to someone who deals with the homeless or you may need to speak to housing.
Utilise the staff who are the contact to the people you are recruiting - i.e. social workers contact to foster families.
Research promotion opportunities - there are opportunities to promote your research on their websites, newsletters, social media.
Make it short, make it stepwise. There are many priorities within LA try to make supporting research as simple for them as possible.
Priorities for LA can align with the ICS recognised priorities for the county, try to be aware of this when circulating studies open for expression to interest for what might catch attention. For example falls prevention is a huge area at the moment in many counties.
Regular communication is key - agree communication, may be useful to email every week - check in, do you need support, are staff off sick, is there annual leave? you have to be on the ball. Best practice, top tip - hangout once a week at an agreed time, telephone call once a week, email from team to say update.
Agree with the study team who will be the one making the contact, LA don't want too many contacts.
Make sure the staff are ready to attend any SIV or training, they may need reminders. Do they need access to a system, you may need to help and support with this
Try to make sure you are copied in on emails from the study team to the site so that you can remind them especially if you are the main contact.
Attend drop in sessions - sometimes the study teams run these so that LA can ask questions but it can be an opportunity to learn from other LA about what is working - maybe agree with your LA you are supporting that they attend once a month.
How to make research a priority
It is good for Ofsted
Try to find out the local authorities plans and priorities - Align these with your research
Sell research as a positive for staff retention and job satisfaction
Promote research as an opportunity to develop
Highlight new training offers which come with supporting research
Further considerations for how a LA works
There are many services which local authorities do not provide as they have 3rd party organisations running services following tendering when contracts are up for renewal.
PPIE vs Community engagement - we do it for research, the LA do it for service improvement.
LA commonly conduct safeguarding, in research we have our approval systems and ethics which are similar.
Learning and evidence meetings sometimes happen in LA, try to find out about this and see if you can attend a meeting to promote the research you are supporting.
There is no policy within LA that demands a research structure, service lead employees may be your point of contact.
The Commissioning and Quality Outcomes Managers work closely with adult social care providers across their patch. They each look after a service, this could be Older Persons Residential and Nursing Homes, Community Prevention, Working Age Adults, Home Care, Learning Disability & Autism. This team are ideally placed to circulate information to their providers and could be a very useful contact for research promotion. They have regular newsletters to raise the profile of your study. There are also Commissioning Carers Lead who may be useful.
Communication tips
Avoid acronyms and NHS or clinical wording in your discussions. You may need a confidentiality agreement so be aware of this. In the NHS we deal with Letters of Access but be aware that LA do not have an R&D office so you may have to be supportive and patient while finding someone who can provide sign off.
LA are generally engaged with research, they are extremely busy but they do understand the importance of research.
They will not know what a site file is - they could call it a study filing system.
They may not have a have PI - they may have a site lead.
Be sure to tailor your language appropriately when in this setting.
There are further resources in the awesome table