Involving experts by experience in adult social care research capacity building: impact and reflections

To ensure that adult social care delivery is informed by evidence, it is crucial to establish links between the social care workforce, researchers, and people with lived experience of accessing services, as well as their families/carers. The Kent Research Partnership is one such research capacity building initiative in adult social care, supported by a public-led Expert by Experience (EbyE) working group. This paper discusses the nature of group activities and their model of involvement, as well as evidencing the group’s impact on the partnership overall. We present three evaluation approaches used to date: (1) an impact log, (2) bi-annual surveys and (3) an NIHR-sponsored ‘CUBE’ evaluation on the quality of public involvement and partnership working and show that each have enabled us to capture different aspects of EbyE impact. Based on this, we argue that a single evaluation tool is unlikely to be sufficient, or adequately uncover both EbyE experiences and impact. EbyE impact is typically captured as part of research projects. Novelly, this paper showcases the impact of and reflections on EbyE involvement in a research capacity building initiative, which has a broader and more emergent remit.