Consulting Services

Consultancy

The NHS Health Research Authority has issued a joint statement on the importance of embedding public involvement in health and social care research.  The document can be found here

CLAPA can provide bespoke services to support the involvement and recruitment of those with lived experience within your projects/research. We have listed some of the ways we can support you. If you would like us to help you, please complete the enquiry form and if you have any questions please contact Gillian at [email protected]

“CLAPA have been invaluable in helping our research to reach the wider cleft community. Their enthusiastic support in sharing information about our research has contributed significantly to our research’s recruitment and I would hope that their consultancy will be able to help shape the research activity of my team and wider colleagues in the future”

Developing the project/research idea

It is important to involve Patients and the Public as early as possible in your research. If you would like feedback from people with lived experience of cleft then we can offer support for this.

Questions regarding the research can be submitted to our CLAPA voices group.

You can gather feedback in any of the following ways:

• A short video presentation (max 10 mins) about the research posing what questions you’d like answered by the patients/carers
• A written summary of the project plus the questions you would like answered by the patients/carers
• A zoom call with a group of patients/carers who are willing to attend to find out more and answer your questions verbally and/or to feedback on proposed patient literature

What we offer:

Depending on your chosen method to gather feedback,

• CLAPA will share the video/written summary with CLAPA Voices and collate the answers to the questions posed alongside demographic information where available
• CLAPA will invite participants and organise a zoom call

Involving people with lived experience on steering groups and project patient engagement groups

Recruitment of PPI contributors

• Promotion of the PPI opportunity via the CLAPA Community and to the CLAPA Voices Database using email, social media
• Selection of PPI contributors
• Communication with successful PPI contributors
• Ongoing recruitment as and when group numbers decrease

Training of PPI contributors

• Individual meetings with PPI contributors to ensure they can use the conference meeting media that the group use eg teams/zoom etc
• PPI Induction /training
• Additional 1:1 training where required

Support & Supervision of PPI contributors

• Group supervision sessions
• 1:1 sessions if requested/CLAPA Volunteer
• Mentor/Buddy system
• Additional training as required
• Access to CLAPA Volunteer training sessions
• Access to join PPI discussions/focus groups on new developments in this area to give their views to help improve their PPI experience

Participant recruitment for studies

We can promote your study to our CLAPA Community to help you recruit participants. Promotion/recruitment via social media platforms and direct communication and ideal for

• Participation in studies
• Focus Groups
• Surveys

We can offer a selection of the following:

• Advice regarding the accessibility and readability of the study materials
• Advice regarding the accessibility and readability of the adverts
• Creation of advert/graphics for our social media and newsletter content
• Creation and analysis of contact form for expressions of interest
• Social media posts on appropriate social media eg twitter/facebook/instagram (minimum 2 posts on each)
• Advert in CLAPA Connect newsletter
• Targeted emails to help recruitment (limited to studies where there’s a very clear benefit to the cleft community and likely to be a lot of interest)
• Involvement of CLAPA Voices for direct patient/carer feedback
• Designated point of contact within CLAPA

Sharing your research

We can help promote your research

• Promotion of outcomes of research/projects via website and social media
• Research Q&A – planning questions, live video recording, transcribing video

Designated website hub (hosting)

We can also offer a designated area of our website to your study to promote the research/project taking place.