You're receiving this newsletter from the Faculty of Health and Social care's Department of Research.

Tuesday 22 December

In this issue

Other news

International networking

Roxana Anghel is a member of the International Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood from Public Care (INTRAC), a group of researchers from 16 countries, coordinated by Prof. Mike Stein (York University) and Prof. Harriet Ward (Loughborough University).

In September Roxana attended the 7th annual meeting of the group in Spain. Earlier in the year, Roxana contributed to the founding of a new research group developed alongside INTRAC.

This event was hosted by Queen's University, Belfast and the group comprised doctoral researchers undertaking studies in transitions from care to adulthood in nine countries in Europe and the Middle East.

At the first meeting Roxana presented her doctoral research and conducted a seminar discussion on Theorising Youth Transitions from Public Care, where she introduced Concept Mapping as method of organising the group's knowledge.

An Invitation to speak:

Carol Munn-Giddings and Melanie Boyce have been invited by two Norwegian colleagues (Leads in patient education who work with Trondheim University) in 2010/11 to co-edit a Special Issue of the International Journal of Self Help and Self Care on Scandinavian self help groups and forms of mutual aid. Their role is to assess the international relevance (or otherwise) of the commissioned articles.

Newly approved Faculty Research Group:

The Participatory Research Group was formalised at the Faculty Board in October for 3 years. The core aims are to bring together staff and research students from across the Faculty/University who are actively involved in undertaking, supporting and promoting participatory research in the fields of health & social care and to consolidate and build Anglia Ruskin University's reputation and profile as a leader in the application of participatory approaches in research, service and community development. Associated activities are advertised by Carol Munn-Giddings and Melanie Boyce.

Group Supervision of Undergraduate Dissertations

Jane Akister, Isabel Williams and Andrew Maynard have had a paper published in the Practice and Evidence of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Vol 4, No 2 (2009). They think it will be of interest to all staff in the university who are involved in the supervision of dissertations.

This paper explores the student experience of the use of individual and group supervisory strategies with students undertaking their undergraduate dissertation on a social work programme.

The findings indicate that small, supervisor led peer groups may be an effective mode for undergraduate dissertation supervision. This preliminary study suggests that there may be advantages of the peer group approach including: a higher rate for completion on time; greater student engagement maintained during the process and less 'failure driven' learning. The students' results suggest that there is no detrimental effect on performance.

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Contact us

If you have any further updates or new ideas for the next research newsletter then please forward to Tina Moules at tina.moules@anglia.ac.uk

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New Resources for Researchers

New University Library Pages For Researchers can be found at university library resources homepage or under the following headings:
University Library Resources
Beyond Anglia Ruskin
Keeping yourself Updated
Research Communities
Managing your Research
Research News

Library Researchers' Day
Faculty Liaison Librarians would like to invite postgraduate research students and staff to an open day at the Cambridge campus library on Wednesday 20 January 2010. More details to follow.

Social Bookmarking Research
Go to http://delicious.com/fhsc/Research to see a list of links which might be useful to FHSC researchers. If you would like to add your own suggestions the Username is fhsc_research and the password research01.

JSTOR
JSTOR offers a high-quality, interdisciplinary archive to support scholarship and teaching. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. This collection of journal back-runs has been purchased especially for their research value.

Publications and Conferences

Publications
Anghel, R. & Ramon, S., 2009. Service Users and Carers' Involvement in Social Work Education: Lessons from an English Case Study. European Journal of Social Work, 12 (2), pp1-15.

Anghel, R., Fox, J. & Warnes, M. November 2009. An Exploration of Concept Mapping as a Method of Evaluating Student Learning in Social Work. In J. Carpenter & H. Burgess eds. Evaluating Outcomes in Social Work Education, SWAP Monograph:Southampton.

O'Brien, N., 2009. Secondary school teachers' and pupils' definitions of bullying in the UK: a systematic review. Evidence & Policy, 5(4), pp399-427.

Gelling, L., 2009. Nursing students must be grounded in research (Editorial). Nurse Researcher, 17(1), p3.

Gelling, L., 2009. Clinicians and universities must collaborate better (Editorial). Nurse Researcher, 16(4), p3.

Moules, T., 2009. Children and Families: Commentary. Nurse Researcher, 16(3), pp4-6.

Moules, T., 2009. 'They wouldn't know how it feels....': characteristics of quality care from young people's perspectives: a participatory research project. Journal of Child Health Care, 13(4), pp322-332.

Smajdor, A., Sydes, MR., Gelling, L., Wilkinson, MJ. 2009. Applying for ethical approval for research in the UK. British Medical Journal, 339, pp968-971.

Conferences
Anghel, R. & Dima, G. Sept 2009. Child Care and Leaving Care in Romania. International Perspectives in Child Welfare Conference. Facing Challenges and Implementing Advances. University of Oviedo, Spain

Anghel, R., Hicks, J. & Amas, D. 2009. Exploring uncertainty, empathy and resilience through self-reflection, creative mediums, and experiential learning. The 11th UK Joint Social Work Education Conference. University of Hertfordshire

Anghel, R. and Fox, J., 2009. Evaluating learning about partnership with service users using Concept Mapping (presentation) and Concept Mapping (workshop). National Symposium organised by SWAP/HEA, London

Gelling, L., Dec 2009. Research Nurse Competencies. Scottish Research Nurse and Co-ordinators Network Annual Conference, Dundee.

Gelling, L., Nov 2009, Introduction to the Competencies Framework for Clinical Research Nurses. NIHR CRN Lead Nurses Group, London.

Project news

Carol Munn-Giddings and Melanie Boyce (in collaboration with Sarah Collis from Self Help Nottingham and Mark Avis & Sarah Chaundary from Nottingham University) have been successful in an application to the Big Lottery. They have been awarded £264,866 to carry out a project on 'developing effective support for community based self help groups'.

A number of projects are being funded internally and include: McVicar, A, Munn-Giddings, C; Crow, J (2009-11). Managing stress within the workplace: a participatory approach. Funded PhD studentship based with Colchester Borough Council.

Munn-Giddings, C; McVicar, A., Boyce, M.,& O'Brien, N (2009/10) An Evaluation of Training and Supporting Older People as Researchers includes Maxine Nightingale & Lyn Kent (SE-SURG) as independent evaluators.

Completed project
In June 2009 Roxana Anghel, Debbie Amas and Judy Hicks completed the Experiential Workshops Exploring 'Self' in Social Work Education, a pilot educational programme funded by INSPIRE. The programme offered a reflective space to first year BA Social Work students to explore experientially and through creative media (movement, drama, sand tray and art) abstract concepts such as uncertainty/risk/fear, empathy/self-awareness, and resilience. The evaluation of this work, focused on the process of developing the programme and on the programme's (subjective) impact reported by students and found that the focus on self-exploration had facilitated learning, personal transformation, self-awareness and a sense of self-efficacy. The programme was perceived as an opportunity for active and holistic understanding of abstract concepts, which were experienced as harder to learn theoretically in class. Students also felt that they acquired a more realistic view of social work as a profession. Roxana, Judy and Debbie have presented their programme at two internal events organised by INSPIRE and FHSC, and at the 11th Joint Social Work Education Conference (JSWEC).

Presentation
Steven Walker, Dept Mental Health and Learning Disability presented details of his research into child and adolescent mental health service development- An evaluation of new interprofessional CAMH service provision at the Asia Conference on Emerging Issues in Public Health held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in November 2009, under the auspices of the Faculty of Public Health and Primary Care.