WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP

Solent Community
Research Partnership

One of the key strands of our strategy is to work in partnership with patients, colleagues and communities. The Solent Community Research Partnership is committed to working alongside organisations who would like to enable their clients, students, residents or services users to research or learn more about it.

As a key part of the local community, we have developed a number of partnerships with local organisations.

The aim of these partnerships is to offer more people the chance to take part in health and social care research, promoting the message that health care and research is all around us and not just available when you go to your local hospital. By taking the opportunity to get involved in a research project to local people where they live, work, play or study can make research more accessible and increase the number of people who are able to take part.

The partnerships enables local organisations to offer these opportunities to the people they work. The Academy team work with partners to find research studies that might suit their residents, students, clients etc. The academy team then undertake all the necessary checks and approvals for the projects and coordinates with the partner about when and how the study will be conducted. These partnerships give organisations the confidence to promote research that is safe and ethical and is delivered by an experienced research team.

CURRENT COLLABORATIONS

Partnerships in action

Working with patients and the public

Community and Outreach groups

Care Home Research Partnership

Younger persons

University and Higher Education partnerships

Dental partnership

Working with patients and the public

One of our core aims as an Academy is to work in partnership with those that use our come into contact with either ourselves or our services.

The group that work within the Academy are called Side-by-Side; this is a partnership with a dedicated group of individuals that give a patient and public perspective to our work. The group meet regularly to help make sure everything that the team do has a patient and public perspective embedded at the heart of it.

We also place patients and the public at the heart of our training. We are keen that all of our Quality Improvement Projects include patient or community input, and the training is open to anyone that would like to be involved. Similarly, patient or service user colleagues are welcome to submit ideas for our Dragons' Den innovation fund, to work with Solent services on new initiatives.

Care Home Research Partnership (CHRP)

The Solent Care Home Research Partnership is one of our community research partnership streams. It sees Solent's Academy of Research and Improvement working alongside local care homes in Portsmouth, Southampton and the surrounding areas, to offer residents the opportunity to take part in research. We are currently expanding this model to include local care agencies who visit patients in their own homes.

Any local care home or agency can be involved if they have an interest in research and evidence based practice. The Academy team identify studies that might be of interest to local care homes or agencies, together we review the studies, assess whether they are doable and whether clients would find them interesting.

If everyone is happy the Academy team undertake all the necessary governance, ethical and regulatory checks to ensure the research is safe. We then provide experienced staff to come into the home and deliver the study alongside care home/agency staff. Each study is different and may require different amounts of involvement but generally we are there to help as much as we can.

As part of the partnership we can also offer training to local staff around evidence based practice and we ensure we feedback the results of studies to care home/agency teams. Teams may also like to be further involved in the research process by contributing to new and forthcoming research ideas. We can help build partnerships with Solent clinical academics or with our university partners.

DOWNLOAD CHRP LEAFLET

University and Higher Education partnerships

We work with a number of Universities to offer a wide variety of research opportunities to patients in the local area. Our partnerships allow us to assist in the development of new research projects and support our academic partners to achieve successful applications for research grants hosted by the NHS.

Examples of this partnership working are:

We have a Clinical Academic Pathway which offers joint posts with research training and clinical practice. We deliver this in partnership with a range of Universities (most commonly with the University of Southampton).
A collaboration with the Centre for Sexual Health Research which is working in particular on the use of digital technology in the delivery sexual health services.
We are a partner organisation of the NIHR Wessex ARC (Applied Research Collaboration), this include projects with their Data Science Hub modelling optimum locations for sexual health clinics and the use of a social networking tool (GENIE) to support recovery and home based care for those with mental health illness or long terms conditions.

Community and Outreach groups

The Academy of Research and Improvement works with a large range of community groups in Portsmouth, Southampton and the surrounding areas, offering people the opportunity to be involved in research.

These are often groups who meet because of a specific medical conditions such as Multiple sclerosis support groups or local meetings of the Alzheimers society or National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society. Our research nurses or physios can attend the group and talk to people about what research projects are happening locally and how they can get involved.

People may also like to get involved in research in other ways such as helping to develop new research ideas, working with some of our university partners and clinical academics to get funding for research or working with the academy team's patient partnership network Side-by-Side.

We are really keen to work with more community groups including those that don't have anything to do with a specific health condition but would like to find out more about taking part or getting involved in health and social care research.

Younger persons

As part of the Academy of Research and Improvement's community research partnership scheme we have been working with local schools, pre-schools, nurseries and family hubs to widen the opportunities for local people to get involved in research.

We are currently working with primary, Junior and secondary schools across the local area on an study investigating the antibiotic resistance of bacteria commonly carried in our mouths and noses. The Solent research team carries out all of the research activities and the schools promote the study to their parents and children. As part of the collaboration the academic team from the University of Southampton have delivered bespoke lessons around research and microbiology.

A similar study is being carried out in partnership with pre-schools, nurseries and children’s community groups across Portsmouth and Southampton investigating the impact of the meningitis vaccination programme.

As part of the partnership the Academy team can offer lessons or teaching sessions about research, or sessions specific to the science behind the study we are working on. The partnerships we build are bespoke and we are happy to tailor them to the needs of each organisation. We are keen to work with any organisations supporting young people to offer them the chance to take part in research.

Dental partnership

The University of Portsmouth’s Dental Academy is working alongside us to offer the patients attending their busy dental practice the opportunity to be involved in research. This may be research specific to dentistry as well as other health and social care research.

Solent's Academy of Research and Improvement and the UPDA work together to find research studies which might fit well within their practice. Solent undertake the necessary governance and regulatory checks and our jointly supported research dental therapists/nurses carry out the study.

We are hoping to extent this model to other local dental practices who have an interest in being involved with research. If you would like to find out more or talk to us about being involved please get in touch.

We are also working collaboratively with the UPDA to develop home grown ideas working with university researchers aiming to successfully achieve funding for research which may improve the oral health of children and people suffering with dementia.