Lights Camera Action…Digitally Enabling Public Involvement Participants

Last month, our incredible team of Public Involvement Parents at CASCADE Parents Research Advisory Group were offered the opportunity to develop digital skills that could be used to support their involvement in the whole research cycle at CASCADE. We hope these skills might ultimately enable the group to contribute and disseminate their own research and experience. We also hope that these skills will be useful in developing their interests, careers, and confidence.

We contacted Swansea: Music Arts Digital to help us deliver three training and support sessions for the group. They are a charity who develop inclusive safe spaces for people to access advocacy, creative arts, education, digital access, employability support, training, campaigning activities. With the help of Dave Berry from Swansea: Music Arts Digital, our team set about learning how to script, edit, interview, film and produce a short video highlighting their role in our research.

The response has been brilliant, and the film can be seen here (Parents Research Advisory Group | CASCADE Wales)

This also represented one of our first face to face sessions with the parents after COVID and an opportunity to reflect on their experiences and the role that the research group has had in allowing them to grow and help make Social Services work better for future parents.

“What I really like about this group is that it’s organic, its started slow and it’s taken onboard what’s actually needed… I found here we are looking outside the box a bit and even things like making this video. Those are skills we can use somewhere else, in another group.”

CASCADE Parents Group Member

“It’s been a fantastic experience setting up this group involving people with wider experiences in our work with CASCADE. This video has allowed us to reflect on everything and we are really excited for the work we will do in the future.”

Rachael Vaughan Public Involvement Lead CASCADE

As always, many thanks to all our wonderful Parents Research Advisory Group and we hope that they save us tickets to the premiere of their next blockbuster!