Groups we work with
Our focus is on care from the perspective of families and individuals, communities and workers and the care practices, services and systems that affect them. We actively engage with people with lived experience.
Centre for Care Voice Forum
The Centre for Care Voice Forum is a group that offers advice within the Centre’s overall governance structure. Its membership includes people with lived experience of receiving and/or giving care and support. It meets four times a year to discuss Centre-wide impact activities, review documentation, and discuss any issues or topics brought forward by the Voice Forum. In particular, the Voice Forum:
- Ensures the Centre for Care is working towards its commitment to work in collaboration with experts by experiences
- Checks that the information and documents we produce is accessible, respectful and appropriate
- Explores opportunities for engagement and including the voices of others.
Centre Manager Kelly Davidge attends the Voice Forums to keep members updated about how they are shaping the work of the Centre, and to ensure that discussions are fed back to appropriate Centre teams. Bespoke co-production arrangements for Centre for Care research will be established for projects, surveys and other research activities the Centre undertakes.
University of Birmingham Lived Experience Panel
The University of Birmingham Lived Experience Panel is a group of people with lived experience of adult social care. This includes people who have directly received practical and/or financial support, and those who have cared for someone accessing such support. The Lived Experience Panel meets every two months with the adult social care cluster leads and researchers undertaking research projects. The panel helps to identify what are the important topics which should be researched, improve the design of research projects which are being developed, and understand the implications of research findings for people who access social care support. Members of the panel also take part in projects as co-researchers and provide mentorship to early career researchers to build skills and insight in co-research.
Several members of the Lived Experience Panel have written commentaries for the Centre for Care. They have helped to shape research instruments and provided mentorship to the academic research team.
Design and Methods Group
The Digital Care research theme is collaborating with Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) and people with lived experience of care and support to co-produce a project. Working as a ‘Design and Methods Group’ together we will explore how people use creative mixes of everyday and specialist technologies to live well and do the things that are important to them. We collaboratively design the research methods we use, explore the data and draw out key themes and develop outputs to share with other people who receive care and support, practitioners and policymakers.
Get in touch
To find out more or to express your interest in joining either the Voice Forum or our other co-production activities, please email centreforcare@sheffield.ac.uk.