Three intrepid researchers deliver ECC’s first in-house digital ethnography. It’s been a daring adventure and a leap of faith for us to combine an online tool (Incling) with research skills, for a project about mental health support.
Recently we completed a research project with survivors of domestic abuse, and wanted to share a bit about how we did it and why it was so important to us that this research has an impact. We engaged with survivors of domestic abuse over a period of several months, to explore how they want to share their views, provide feedback and be involved in decision-making, in a way that is best for them.
We commissioned Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI) to undertake a review of community need and ‘left behind’ areas in Essex. The review sought to help us understand how Essex compares to other areas in terms of its levels of community need, and which factors are more significant than others in contributing to areas having high levels of need.
“How hard can it be?” That is my thought process when I come to approaching new challenges. If I’m able to see others excelling at one thing, I know that with enough time and practice I’ll be able to replicate what they can do. So, when I was asked to create a Power BI dashboard to enable ECC to share the residents’ survey data, “how hard can it be?”, came straight into my head.
In September 2020 we started on our journey to explore families' views of the current Short Breaks service. Our brief was to see how current services were meeting the needs of children with disabilities, and what services might look like in the future.
Any project in a local authority setting has a certain degree of bureaucracy. And that’s good, bureaucracy makes sure people are kept in the loop, makes sure services are fit for purpose, makes sure we are accountable and transparent. But bureaucracy can also make our workdays too long, frustrate us and distract us from our, and the organisation’s, motivation.
Soon after lockdown began, we started thinking about how best to find out about the needs and experiences of our residents through the pandemic. With face-to-face research out of the question, we pondered how best to undertake qualitative research with residents...
Some time ago before the “you know what” happened, the Research and Citizen Insight team were asked to take part and present at the Delib user group at Transport for London’s headquarters in Stratford, just a stone’s throw away from Queen Elizabeth Olympic park.
These are the words of Sir Michael Marmot, used 10 years ago, to describe the long shadow cast by health inequalities across the country. Put simply, "inequalities are a matter of life and death, of health and sickness, of well-being …
The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, a mouthful no doubt so don’t expect to see that again, let's call it the JSNA. The JSNA is a way of understanding what our Essex population looks like, how many people live where, what the health conditions are, what services they use, and where they are.