Authors: Maria Coleman, Professor Soo Downe, Bethany Gill and Dr Alison Moore

Experience of the NIHR Local Authority Short Placement Award

This is a blog I have written with my PhD supervisors and placement supervisors about the experience of participating in an NIHR Local Authority Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration (LASPARC).

Being a PhD Doctoral Fellow with ARC NWC allows me to engage with the NIHR Academy. In September 2021, the NIHR introduced a pilot of the Local Authority Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration (LA SPARC). The award supports individuals to move between the NIHR and Local Authority settings in both directions. For me, this meant the opportunity to spend some time outside my NIHR PhD to spend time with service commissioners and providers, learning more about them and the challenges they face.

The title of my PhD is ‘Telehealth during Covid-19, with a focus on health visiting’. I have research experience of digital, implementation and health service research, but prior to starting my PhD I had very limited knowledge of health visiting. I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time researching about the profession and it’s history, and to speak to experts on my advisory board about health visiting. Then the opportunity of the LASPARC Grant was publicised. I saw the opportunity to understand more about health visiting and the broader aims of public health at a local level.

With support of Lancashire County Council and HCRG Care Group, we developed an application for me to spend a day a month at either organisation to learn more about health visiting, early years and public health and to gain experience and understand the intertwined complexities of commissioners, decision makers and commissioned services. This placement has allowed me to meet with practitioners who have shared their knowledge and experience of commissioning different services and projects.

As part of my time with Lancashire County Council, I have started to understand how commissioning cycles work and how important early collaborations are in order for research to be included. I have also had the opportunity to meet with staff who deliver some of the early year programmes in the local area. They shared with me the benefits to families of the groups, and also some of the challenges families face, especially since Covid-19. I also met with the team who work in community engagement, and I have been able to understand more about their work, and also share with them potential opportunities for research collaboration.

My time spent with HCRG Care Group has allowed me to gain an insight into the work of health visiting services. This has included learning about how services are staffed, the wide range of public health initiatives the service delivers and how they collaborate with other services to support families. I have had the opportunity to shadow leadership and see how decisions about service delivery are made, and how research can be incorporated. This has helped with my understanding of the scope of health visiting, which will allow my research to be more informed and to think about future collaborations.

From discussions on the placement with HCRG Care Group and Lancashire County Council, we have formed a local research network to explore infant feeding. With support of the ARC NWC Equitable Place Based and Health Care (EPHC) Team based at Lancaster University are meeting regularly with other local interested individuals to work towards collaborative research projects to explore infant feeding in Lancashire further.

I have had a fantastic experience on my LASPARC placement, and I have had great support from all of my supervisors. I would encourage anyone who is eligible to apply to undertake an LASPARC to do so. The opportunity to carve out time to learn something new and from a different perspective has been incredibly rewarding. I have also had the opportunity to meet some amazing people with shared interests, allowing for collaboration outside of this placement and the PhD.

If you are thinking of applying for, or want to know more about, an LASPARC or want to find out more about the Infant Feeding Research Network please do get in touch! Bgill2@uclan.ac.uk / b.gill2@lancaster.ac.uk.

‘My name is Maria Coleman, and I am the quality lead for HCRG Care Group. The Quality Lead is responsible for providing oversight on clinical quality and effectiveness on behalf of the 0-19 Lancashire service, this is inclusive of seeking out innovative ways of working and actively implementing these within clinical groups. These innovations require review of the implementation, audit, and evaluation of effectiveness to ensure the changes maintain a quality service. Research forms the basis of this innovation and checking system and I was excited to be involved in the placement with Bethany as her supervisor and facilitator within our service. Bethany has been a valuable sounding board with an external lens and I look forward with interest to reading her completed research.’

‘For me, the main feature of this placement opportunity was to be able to support a PhD student. I am always willing to develop people and their skills, whilst bringing public health into view. Public health is not something that people usually seek out as a career unlike work in the health service, as it is often not as defined so this was a great opportunity to show this option. I was also keen to support this placement because of the subject matter and the partnership working with HCRG Care Group. Like Maria said, it was also good to have Bethany’s external and objective view on some of our work. Being a pracademic myself, I want to nurture relationships with Academia and build the existing relationships with UCLan and Lancaster University. It has also been a delight to meet Bethany’.

Alison Moore, Public Health Specialist, Lancashire County Council

Twitter Handles: @HCRGCareGroup @bethany_gill1