Research that pays off

Young mothers, people with current or recent experience of using local drug treatment services, community champions from Upper Horfield in Bristol, survivors of domestic abuse, and community activists from Torbay don’t sound like people who’d want to celebrate together.  But they and more found much to share at a networking day yesterday organised by South West Foundation to bring together groups which had all completed Community Researcher training.

This initiative, funded by Empowering Communities, enables people with no previous experience of social activism to become a real force for change in their local communities, and builds in a way of getting their needs responded to positively by local service providers.  The training teaches people how to use basic research tools – such as simple ways to create questionnaires, getting local people to respond, analysing the data and (researchers typically find this the most nerve-racking bit!) presenting the results to local power-holders in a meeting.

It works.  Every change that the residents of the Oldmixon estate in Weston-super-Mare identified to the trainees of the first course has now been achieved.  The wish-list included opening a community shop, moving a zebra crossing – and also a bail hostel!  Read an early evaluation (more forthcoming soon).  The shop is now making a tidy income, is used for drop-in sessions and a youth club, and the group is considering another phase of research. 

One of the many things that struck me about all the people who gathered to share their experiences of the community research course was how much energy and ability to change things – and to develop as individuals - that there is in communities that are more used to having things done to them, if they are lucky. It needs just a short period of work with good trainers and some continuing support and understanding from local agencies to release that ability for communities to organise themselves. 

And who better to reach members of some communities and learn their needs than members of that community?  As the worker for the drug treatment service user group told me, she could not have found 58 people and discovered what help they really wanted (peer support and buddying came out top) nearly as easily as they did. For the members of the group it’s now about moving on from being a local forum meeting every two months to becoming actively involved in peer support in North Somerset; they’ve been given the office, now one of them is sky-diving to raise some of the money they need.

How much would a consultant have charged for researching the needs of local drug users?  And once a consultant has confirmed, say, that a community wants a piece of land to become a proper play area rather than a profit-opportunity for developers, would that consultant stick around, seeing funding come, go and come again, until the play area becomes a reality (work starts this month in Torbay on a play area  that community researchers there have insisted on)?

I could go on.  It’s clear that the current graduates of the courses will go on. I just hope that this community researcher training itself goes on to train more communities to feel, and be, empowered.  Exploratory talks about forming a social enterprise to sell the research skills of research course graduates are taking place, so I’m not without hope that even in these straitened times, it will.