Our Approach - Multi Voice Collaborative Research
This research stemmed from a multi-agency management education programme, the Postgraduate Diploma/Masters in Leading, Managing & Partnership Working directed by Sheila Marsh and Marion Macalpine.
Programme participants all worked in the same area of London across networks and partnerships that seemed to be rich in promise and potential but also in stresses. They were all committed to enabling service users/carers from their diverse communities gain access to better care and improved health – but recognising this and designing services with 'one face to the user' is of course more difficult than it sounds.
We designed a 3 stage process that we followed in both phases of the research: (More Details)
Stage 1 – programme participants’ stories and resulting themes
Stage 2 – participants’ partners and their stories
Stage 3 – website presentation of all stories with researchers’ commentary
We intended this process to capture the informal, implicit and personal stories our programme participants were telling: closely felt experiences of immediate and up to date examples of practical collaboration on the ground in the ‘swamp’.. We were inspired by the story of the play Tamara, that mirrors the simultaneous, shifting, multiple perspectives of life at work especially when people work across organisational boundaries.
NHS London Directorate of Education funded the first phase of research in 2000-2001. In 2005-2007 we undertook a second phase sponsored by Thames Valley University.
