In May, the CASCADE Public Involvement Team convened an Involvement Board meeting to review and analyse our latest CASCADE Stakeholder Report. This blog highlights the key discussions, insights, and outcomes from that meeting.
Our Involvement Board is CASCADE’s strategic lived experience governance board. The boards’ main function is to hold us accountable, provide scrutiny, identify areas for improvement, and strengthen our relationships with our public, professional, and funding stakeholders.
The board was originally set up to provide strategic governance for our ‘Public Involvement team’ only, but we are now transitioning the boards remit and oversight to cover CASCADE as a whole. This is an exciting time for the board and for CASCADE, where we are committed to involving those with lived experience meaningful across all levels of our work.
It consists of nine board members drawn from:
- our research centre,
- professionals in, or related to, Social Services,
- and adults and young people with lived experience of Social Services interventions who have previously worked with us.
In this instance, we also had a Care Experienced Placement. They attended as part of Cardiff Council’s Bright Start Scheme. The scheme aims to give Care Experienced Young People work experience placements.
”I really enjoy working with CASCADE it’s great being a volunteer and being able to see work from the board room to in-person. I’ve learned a lot about how organisations work and that our views really do count. We are not just there for token gestures. Our views and experiences really do help encourage and enhance the work”
A quote from one of our Experts-by-Experience Board members.
Our Stakeholder Report is a summary of the research and development in our centre. The report highlights include continued success in grant capture and project delivery.
During the meeting, the Involvement Board delved deep into the stakeholder report, focusing on the language used, the style of the writing, the visual content, testimonials, and the implied hierarchies in the design – among other areas.
However, it was also a moment where we were able to reflect on and celebrate our accomplishments from the previous year. Particularly, around those areas where we could demonstrate the value of Public Involvement.
Our next meeting will be in September where we will focus on exploring CASCADE’s future development ideas with the director of CASCADE, Prof. Donald Forrester.
