Christine
Smith
Consultancy
Services.
Training and Mentorship
I work closely with clients to deliver tailored training packages and materials about public involvement. I use both on-line and face to face approaches and I encourage both researchers (at any level) and members of the public to get involved. I believe that public involvement is everyone's responsibility. I provide mentorship to researchers and public contributors to help them build their confidence to work independently.
Planning, Facilitation & Mentorship
I work closely with research teams to fully understand their projects: context, goals and the impact they are trying to achieve. I encourage and mentor researchers to prioritise inclusivity and to consider additional perspectives.
I use face to face and online meetings to help me be as inclusive as possible. I promote coproduction principles in all my work and advocate for the meaningful integration of lived experiences into research planning and delivery. In this way the voice of people with diverse lived experience is heard and valued in research, researchers build trusted relationships with public contributors and communities and the quality of research is improved.
Equality Impact Assessments
In research projects, Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) act as fairness checks. They are risk assessments for making sure research is fair and inclusive. Just like researchers analyse data for insights, EIAs examine research policies and processes to spot any unfairness or bias. By looking at things like how people are chosen to take part in a study or how the results are shared, EIAs ensure that everyone, regardless of who they are, has a fair chance to be involved and benefit from the research.
I can support your team by:
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Undertaking EIAs with your team
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Reviewing and adding value to existing equality approaches and assessments
I talk about EIAs in a webinar here:
I worked with Christine for several years while we were both staff members at the University of Huddersfield. Our professional relationship was very fruitful, leading to multiple publications in high-impact journal articles. Through Christine's networks I was available to develop new networks of my own with Russell Group universities and elsewhere.
Dr John Stephenson, University of Huddersfield 2022