Participant, Facilitator, Clinician, Researcher: Reflecting on personal and professional experiences of co-production at the outset of researching co-production in youth mental health.

My first experiences of co-production were in the national youth charity Woodcraft Folk (WCF). An organisation founded on principles of co-operation and youth empowerment whose trustee board has included a majority of young people for more than 20 years [1] [2] [3]. From joining, age 8, I was given responsibilities which contributed to collective aims. Co-producing events and campaigns with my peers in the self-organising 16-20 year old section were formative experiences [4]. Age 22, I began working at the head office as a youth empowerment development officer. My role was to support a steering group of young(er) people to run leadership training, improve representation in the organisation, and to have fun (allegedly then the only big lottery funded youth programme using ‘fun’ as an outcome measure!). Of course, it wasn’t perfect co-production - the holy grail – but, in these roles I witnessed the ‘magic’ and ‘electricity’ often spoken about in relation to co-production.

Rather than focusing on the negative, we need a strength-based way to approach First Nations childrens’ health

This article by Jennifer Browne (@DrJennBrowne), Jill Gallagher (@jillgal11942623) and colleagues demonstrates how to adopt a strengths-based approach in research about First Nations children’s health, and also shows us how to write about research in a strengths-based and respectful way. Their research highlights the links between physical health and social/emotional wellbeing, and individual health and community wellbeing. Originally published in The Conversation.

Creating using evidencePower to Persuade13 September 2022first nations, health, social determinants of health, research

Agency in Youth Mental Health

This post by Lisa Bortolotti is a re-post in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health funded by the Medical Research Council and led by Rose McCabe at City University, UK. Lisa is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, affiliated with the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Mental Health. In this post she answers four questions about her work on agency in youth mental health.

Gender disparities in STEM research: A case study of cardiovascular researchers in Australia

The Federal government wants to see more women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) careers; a strategy for encouraging women to remain in STEM careers was a key component of the 2020 budget. While there is plenty of interest from girls and women, the well-known ‘leaky pipeline’ means women drop out of a promising STEM career trajectory at critical junctures, and those who remain are often less satisfied than their male counterparts. In today’s important analysis, Rachel Climie (@RachelClimie), Anna Calkin (@Anna_Calkin) and Niamh Chapman (@Dr_NChapman) share their research into the gender disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD), along with important insights into what would make it easier for women to thrive.

Womens Policy Action TankWomen's Policy Action Tank30 March 2021Gender Inequity, research

The gender-based data gap in Australian medical research is a problem for everybody

There is a long-standing assumption that medicine, and the research underpinning medical interventions, is gender neutral. However, a growing body of evidence is demonstrating that this is not the case, with harmful consequences. Today’s analysis, from Dr Amy Vassallo (@amyjvassallo), Dr Cheryl Carcel (@cheryl_carcel), Prof Louise Chappell (@chappell_louise), Prof Robyn Norton (@RobynNorton8), Dr Janani Shanthosh (@janshanthosh), Prof Mark Woodward and Dr Zoe Wainer (@dr_zoe_wainer) of The George Institute for Global health (@GeorgeInstitute) provide an overview of current research, policy and practice gaps in Australian medical research. This analysis is drawn from their article, recently published in The Medical Journal of Australia.

Violence against public servants: risks and possible solutions

Violence and aggression perpetrated against frontline public servants is a serious issue, argues Steve Munns, psychologist, public servant and PhD scholar at the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance.

Issues, Service DeliveryPower to Persuade7 October 2020public service, policy problem, crime, regulation, research

Child protection and risks from Covid-19: Home visits and the challenges of social distancing

Since lockdown measures were introduced on 23rd March 2020 in the UK, while a minority of vulnerable children attend school, and school staff have worked hard to stay connected, social workers and family support workers have been some of the few safeguarding professionals visiting families in their homes and often the only ones to do so regularly. I this blog post, Professor Harry Ferguson asks - How, then, are social workers and families managing the risks from COVID-19 that home visits carry?

Multiple perspectives and policy innovation: The potential creativity of implementing policy across roles and sectors

Today’s post is by Chloe Duncan from the Public Service Research Group, UNSW Canberra, and it explores how the personal identity and experiences of policy practitioners and service providers can inform their practice in profound ways. Based on PhD research into the implementation of breastfeeding policy in Victoria, it suggests that the ability to draw on multiple perspectives, both professional and personal, can allow policy implementers to overcome significant challenges in their work by devising creative and innovative solutions to problems.

InnovationPower to Persuade27 March 2019research, policy research

Supporting NDIS participants’ interpersonal relationships – is a critical ingredient to the scheme’s success being neglected?

In today’s post, Laura Davy (@LauraKDavy) from the Public Service Group, UNSW Canberra and Ariella Meltzer (@ariella_meltzer) from the Centre for Social Impact, UNSW Sydney argue that under current policy settings, the answer to this question is yes. Summarising the findings of research just published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration, they outline three ways in which the scheme’s approach to supporting relationships is insufficient and explore how these limitations can be rectified.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade26 March 2019research, policy making, social services

Evidence and Management of the 7 Deadly Sins in Performance Management: Because People will be People

Kicking off an exciting week of posts from the Public Service Research Group at UNSW Canberra, today’s post from Professor Deborah Blackman (@debbiebl2), Dr Fiona Buick (@fibuick) and Professor Michael O’Donnell explores the ‘seven deadly sins’ of performance management that emerged in their recent research.

Access, engagement, then impact: factors affecting decision-makers’ use of research

In this piece, Pauline Zardo uses an analysis of The Conversation Annual Survey to consider what influences policy decision-makers' use of research. Increasing access to research is the key. Pauline's piece was first published on the LSE Impact Blog.

Trailblazers working together in cross-sector initiative to address financial exclusion

The Financial Inclusion Action Plan (FIAP) is an innovative collaboration that sees organisations across industry, government, not-for-profits and education coming together to improve financial inclusion and resilience across Australia. Here Vinita Godinho and Abigail Powell explain the importance of a program such as this and reveal findings from the evaluation of phase one of the FIAP program.

Taking Stalking Seriously

Stalking as a phenomenon has been noted in human behaviour for well over a century. References to obsessive behaviour and the need to retain intimacy with another person can be seen in the writing of Victorian author, Louise May Alcott, who wrote Little Women. In her novel, A Long Fatal Love Chase, a woman is chased across the seas for years by her estranged husband, until he mistakenly kills her whilst trying to murder her new partner. Holding her dead body in his arms, the ‘stalker’ then kills himself and as he does so he says “Mine first - mine last – mine even in the grave!” This obsession to the point of murder is not a sensational, fictitious idea but a behaviour which is worryingly still prevalent within our society in 2017. In this blog post Victoria Charleston, Policy Officer at Suzy Lamplugh Trust explores stalking and potential implications for policy.

Using psychological insights to communicate with policymakers

This week on Power to Persuade, we are focusing on 'Impact'—how can academic research make a contribution to society? How can it influence the development of policy, practice or service provision? In today's post, Paul Cairney and Richard Kwiatkowski explore the importance of using insights from psychological science to effectively communicate research to policymakers. A modified version of this post originally appeared on Paul's blog.

What do we actually do when we do impact?

'Impact' is a fickle concept. We talk about it a lot, but what does it really mean? What form does it take in practice? And what can we do, as researchers and policymakers, to support its emergence? Impact is our theme this week on Power to Persuade. To kick us off, today's post by University of Stirling Senior Lecturer Dr Peter Matthews (@urbaneprofessor) reports on new research from the United Kingdom that explores how academics perceive barriers to achieving impact. This post originally appeared on Peter's blog and has been edited for length.

So you want to change policy? Six steps for academics looking to achieve policy change

The inevitable chaos and unpredictability of politics makes trying to achieve policy change a real challenge. But that doesn’t mean academics should just give up. Drawing from policy analysis and public affairs lessons in the UK, James Lloyd, Director of the London-based think tank the Strategic Society Centre, recommends six steps to get researchers going in the right direction towards achieving policy change.

Creating using evidencePower to Persuade13 March 2017research, evidence-based policy

Integration and Implementation insights - Integration, part 2: the "how"

In this post, Julie Thompson Klein draws together and guides us through the “abundance of resources” that exist to help teams working on inter- and transdisciplinary projects find common ground and advance common goals. The post includes links to five searchable repositories to assist researchers in this sphere. This post originally appeared on the Integration and Implementation Insights blog and is reposted with permission.

InnovationPower to Persuade9 September 2016research, cross-sector relationships

Does measuring poverty multidimensionally make a difference?

There have been various a ttempts in Australian research to measure the 'multidimensional' nature of poverty- that is, adding things like rental stress or health inequity to ordinary income measures. In this post, which originally appeared on the LSE Politics & Policy blog, Rod Hick looks at comparing multidimensional and income poverty measures.

Creating using evidencePower to Persuade29 August 2016outcome and impacts, research

ANZSOG call out for examples of cross-sector partnerships

In partnership with Curtin University, ANZSOG (Australia and New Zealand School of Government) Research has recently funded a number of case studies that look at joint efforts of public, not-for-profit (NFP) and business sector actors working together on public policy problems. This letter below is a call out for examples of recent and ongoing policy/service delivery initiatives that rely upon coordination and cooperation between public sector entities and not-for-profits.

Policy and governancePower to Persuade22 July 2016innovation, research, cross-sector relationships

Publish and Perish: Why academia needs to accept other ways of showing impact in industry-based research projects

Associate Professor Michael Charles & Professor Robyn Keast, School of Business and Tourism, Southern Cross University examine the long accepted the doctrine of ‘publish or perish’ and explore new ways of valuing academic outputs.

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