Trials, tribulations and joys of co-researching with young service users
2004
McLaughlin Hugh
Director of Social Work and Social Policy, University of Salford
Hugh was a social worker who ended up as an Assistant Director of Children's
Services before moving to academia where his research interests include
participatory research, child care, preventative social work and learning
organisations. In his spare time he likes to read, run, and best of all, go scuba diving!
The paper is based on part of the experience of undertaking a national evaluation of the NSPCC’s Young People’s Centres (YPC’s) using young people as co-researchers. The NSPCC were keen to put young people, as consumers of services, at the heart of the YPC initiative and this research by young people was to evaluate how far this goal had been achieved. The young people were recruited from two of the YPC’s and following some group development work undertook an intensive long weekend’s course developing the research instruments – staff and young person’s semi-structured questionnaire, focus group questions and mystery shopper exercise. The young people have now completed the research including contributing to the report and organising a conference to disseminate the findings. Young service users have thus been at the heart of the research from the beginning to the end. (By the time of the conference the full report should be available on the NSPCC website)
The paper will focus on the some of the issues and reality in undertaking research with young service users. In particular I will highlight ethical problems e.g. ? the issue of informed consent; power issues e.g. ?young people interviewing professionals; gender issues and practical problems. I will also identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach sharing some of the lessons I have learned form this very educative experience!
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