It has been an exciting summer of international collaborations for CASCADE, with trips to China, Italy, Germany and Denmark. Most recently, Professor Donald Forrester and Dr Lorna Stabler travelled to Copenhagen to deliver a summer school for the Centre for Better Childhoods at University College Copenhagen.

Centre for Better Childhoods

The Centre for Better Childhoods is a major new interdisciplinary research centre in Denmark, aiming to improve services and outcomes for children under 7 through high quality evaluative research with professionals. The Centre is a collaboration between University College Copenhagen, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the LEGO Foundation and the TrygFonden. From the outset, Professor Forrester has been involved in shaping the new centre as Founding Research Director.

Summer School and Realist methods

Professor Forrester and Dr Stabler were invited to jointly deliver the inaugural summer school for the Centre. The aim was to bring together researchers from across disciplines who work with children aged 0-6 and their families to inspire and support them to develop successful research applications and projects. Professor Forrester took the lead on setting the scene, with an introduction to, and critique of the ‘methods wars’, giving participants a grounding in epistemology, ontology and research design. Dr Stabler led the following two days focused on teaching about realist informed research, equipping participants with the theoretical and practical understanding needed to design and conduct their own realist reviews or evaluations. The final day, led by Professor Forrester consolidated learning into key steps for participants to develop their own project proposals.

The summer school was well attended – with 56 participants registered across the 4 days. Attendants came from departments within the University College Copenhagen, other university colleges from across Denmark, a local hospital, and even from a university in Sweden.

The sessions involve a mix of expert learning, group exercises and peer to peer learning, and some fun.

Summer school participant during the ‘Play Lab’ activity where participants were asked to use the resources in the creative space to find a different way to communicate the core of their research message. This participant used the hats and luggage to show the perceived burden of the multiple tasks and roles of a social worker.

The feedback was extremely positive, with participants feeling they gained both a grounding in research methods that were relevant and applicable to their fields, and also the skills and confidence to take forward their research ideas. One participant said:

“I learned more about the importance of defining and narrowing down my research problem and about communicating both the challenge and my proposed solution clearly and concisely. This became especially clear to me during the different group exercises, where I received many valuable inputs and new ideas for my project.”

Importance to CASCADE

Collaborations like the one with the Centre for Better Childhoods are important to the work that CASCADE does. While we have significant expertise in how children’s social care operates in the UK, and what works and does not, understanding how children’s social care and other disciplines work differently to support children and their families in other countries can help us to think creatively and innovatively about how we can improve practice in Wales. Moreover, being invited to share our knowledge and expertise internationally is recognition of work that we do, and gives us the opportunity to increase the impact of our research with a global audience.

Dr Stabler is remaining in Copenhagen for 3 months as a visiting researcher to help deepen collaborations between CASCADE and the Centre for Better Childhoods.