Reflections on the welfare inquiry experience: Building and enhancing partnership working

Fife is one of the four case sites where What Works Scotland has worked with community planning partnerships on collaborative action research into public service reform.

In this guest blog, Gary Smith, member of the Fife welfare reform inquiry team, reflects on the experience and impact of the collaborative action research activities. 

Digging deep and getting dirty hands! Doing collaborative action research with public services

Since 2015 Dr Hayley Bennett and Dr Richard Brunner have been creating, adapting and co-producing collaborative action research activities with various public service professionals across Scotland. 

Here they share insights on the role of professional researchers in collaborative, participatory and action research approaches. 

Meeting change-makers: connecting research and the ‘real world’

At What Works Scotland we support several PhD researchers working on topics that will deepen our understanding of different aspects of public service reform. 

Kirsty Deacon writes about undertaking an internship with the Scottish Government where she researched the role of u.lab, an online course for developing skills around collaboration and co-production, in supporting Scotland's public service change-makers.

How can place-based approaches be used in rural Scotland?

A place-based approach has become more prominent in Scottish policymaking in the last few years, particularly as a result of the recommendations of the Christie Commission on the delivery of public services and the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. 

But what does this mean for Scotland's rural areas?

Jane Atterton, Manager and Policy Researcher at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) discusses the implications, currently also the subject of joint research by SRUC Rural Policy Centre staff and colleagues at the James Hutton Institute. The research is being funded by the Scottish Government Rural Affairs, Food and the Environment (RAFE) Strategic Research Portfolio 2016-21.

Facilitative Leadership: Involving citizens and communities in local decision-making

A new era of community participation in local democracy requires public services staff to develop skills for collaborative engagement.

Here  Claire Bynner, Oliver Escobar and Wendy Faulkner describe a What Works Scotland project to create a training course that would develop and cascade skills in facilitative leadership.

Can asset-based community development help to address health inequalities?

Assets approaches to addressing disadvantage have become popular in recent years. What does the term mean, and how do the different interpretations of an 'assets approach' impact on their outcomes?

To conclude in our short series about asset-based community development, What Works Scotland PhD student Sarah Ward discusses the benefits of using the capabilities framework to identify clear objectives for asset-based work.

Positive conversations, meaningful change: learning from Animating Assets

In the second of our series on asset-based community development, Dr Jennifer McLean, Public Health Programme Manager at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, describes Animating Assets, a research and learning project that explored what difference working in asset-based way made in communities and services.

Asset-Based Community Development: Sustainable development is about discoverables; not deliverables

Over the next few weeks we shall be publishing a short series of blogs focused on asset-based community development (ABCD). 

To get us started, in this guest blog Cormac Russell, Managing Director of Nurture Development, introduces collective efficacy and grassroots power.

In an era of killer soundbites how can researchers and policy-makers close the gap between complexity and simplicity?

In the world today, simple but wrong answers are preferred to complex and right answers. Policy-makers are often more interested in a good soundbite than a detailed and tailored understanding of a complex world. So… in this 'post-truth era', is complexity becoming a dirty word? Or is the dirty word 'post-truth'?

Here Dr Claire Bynner, Research Associate at What Works Scotland, shares some of the highlights from the Social Research Association’s annual conference* and discusses how we might bridge the gap between complexity and simplicity, drawing on examples from evaluation research.

Getting evidence into action: how can we understand what we already know?

What Works Scotland Co-director Dr Sarah Morton writes about the processes involved in setting up an Evidence Bank to support public and voluntary sector partners in accessing existing research evidence to help to inform decision-making.

Recently published in Evidence and Policy journal, she describes the work she has led at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships where she has been developing knowledge exchange (KE) over the last decade.  Sarah is also Co-director of the Centre.

Messy collaboration

How we ensure that diversity flourishes in collaborations and partnerships?

What Works Scotland co-director Ken Gibb reflects on the argument of applied economist Tim Hartford in his new book on  creativity and resilience.