Collaborating for impact across the South West Peninsula

Emily said: “Whilst we do not profess to be experts, we hope that sharing our own experiences will help you to navigate the path(s) in your quest for meaningful collaboration.”

One of the early things you learn when working on the frontier between academia and local government is that no 2 local authorities are the same. Every local authority has its own identity and personality and working well together requires some flexibility and compromise.

We have all been a LARP in different forms and the roles that we landed in were not identical. Jack and Emily’s roles (along with another in Torbay) were initially funded by the NIHR RDN (formerly CRN) South West Peninsula. This model mirrored the funding that came centrally from the Department of Health and Social Care, which provided the original version of the role hosted by Devon County Council. We all agreed that we benefited from the networks we developed in those first PHLARP roles and the connections resulting from them were vital as we tried to get the hang of our new, and sometimes seemingly unwieldy, roles. In hindsight, it is easy to underestimate just how valuable the legacy of these strong foundational connections has been.

It was not long before we were introduced to Zoe, who was originally funded by an independent project and then became the first to be funded through the Specialist Centre for Public Health as a LARP in our region.

One of the first ways we came together and worked on something was through a capacity survey in local authorities. By sharing and building on each other’s iterations of the survey we’ve been able to bring together data to create a richer picture of capacity in the South West Peninsula.

We’ve also helped to create bespoke training, working closely with the RRDN South West Peninsula, to develop the ‘First Steps into Research’. Our unique positions in our respective local authorities gave us important insight to inform the planning and development of the content. We used our connections to support local authority and voluntary sector colleagues to ignite their passion for research and develop skills for integrating research into practice.

We also work together to make sense of the funding landscape, identifying areas of shared interest, looking at possibilities to collaborate on applications, and also sharing learning from feedback. We have learned that although we all have lots of related projects, we shouldn’t force them to fit but rather keep each other in the loop and see how they land organically.

We’ve recently started a Community of Practice, an informal peer support network – making it easier to sustain isolated posts and share an accumulated knowledge of the research system and partners.  

Here’s what we have learnt working together across the South West Peninsula, and some top tips:

• work out who your people are and get in touch with them – don’t go it alone

• be curious and reach out to people

• learning together is where impact happens

• be open to flexibility and more nuanced ways of research