Peer Researcher's Toolkit

Co-creating a ‘Peer Researcher's Toolkit’ for LGBTQ+ Informal Carers

Funder: Research England, QR Policy Support Fund

Impactful social care research that seeks to influence policy and practice needs to draw upon, and be informed by, the very social groups it wishes to benefit (beneficiaries). Therefore, providing a set of tools and resources to engage with said beneficiaries and involve them from the ideation phase all the way to execution, is of paramount importance. This importance is further highlighted by NIHR, who require explicit plans for a Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) strategy across its flagship programmes. 

There are several rich resources to enable such PPI when involving older adults and care home residents (e.g., ENRICH). However, a recent scoping exercise between the LGBT Foundation and Prof. Hafford-Letchfield, showed that there is a gap in a resource for co-productions in research and practice when it comes to LGBTQ+, and especially when these are informal carers – this is a unique challenge because current best practice indicates that the carer and the person cared for need to be perceived and considered as a unit, and thus researchers need to consider intersectional impacts and implications, that reflect the needs of the LGBTQ+ person and that of the person they care for, who may or may not be LGBTQ+, too.

This project addressed the above shortcoming by informing and supporting research and policy makers in identifying and addressing the needs of LGBTQ+ informal carers. We worked together with the LGBT Foundation and Gaddum (two charities working for and with LGBTQ+ people which have considerable experience engaging and supporting LGBTQ+ informal carers) and Prof. Hafford-Letchfield, who has extensive networks in the social care domain and extensive experience in peer research (University of Strathclyde) to co-create a toolkit providing best practices and guidance regarding involving LGBTQ+ people in funded research. This toolkit will contain information on:

• training, supervision and support of peer researchers who are LGBTQ+ informal carers,

• training material, processes, best practices and frequently asked questions when conducting research with and for them: training standards for interviewing others, protocols for research supervision, advice on and forms of practical and emotional support in doing empirical work.