Researchers-in-Residence in Integrated Care Systems co-producing knowledge for impact in the Southwest Peninsula, UK, since 2016: an interactive workshop

Background: Creating vertical and horizontal integration across health, social care and welfare services to improve outcomes for people with increasing and complex needs is challenging. Using evidence from elsewhere and turning learning into action often fails because systems are complex, interdependent, and unpredictable. A promising solution is embedding learning directly in real-world contexts through relational researcher-in-residence approaches - enabling improvement, innovation, and impact in real time.

 

Approach: This interactive session draws on our experience across diverse public service settings—primary, secondary, mental/public health, children’s and adult social care, and the voluntary sector – we will:

• Introduce the approach: Brief overview of roles and frameworks (embeddedresearch.org.uk).
• Showcase impact: Select case studies from over 15 projects co-produced with service users, communities, and partners across the Southwest Peninsula Integrated Care Systems since 2016.
• Hands-on exercises: Guide participants through practical activities to:

oMap their ambitions for applying this approach in their own settings.

oIdentify opportunities and challenges collaboratively

• Breakout discussions: supported by researchers-in-residences, practitioner-/peer-researchers.

 

Results: The workshop draws on content that relates to all four conference themes around diversity:

1. Community-based care: intermediate care for older people (1,2,3); transitional care for younger people (4).
2. Prevention and technology-enabled care: social prescribing (5,6); asset-based community development (7); peer-based interventions (8); health coaching (9).
3. Health inequalities and wider determinants: Population Health Management, Multiple Disadvantage, Coastal Inequalities (10,11,12).
4. National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) workforce capacity building: peer-/practitioner-research (13,14); Human Learning Systems – appreciative enquiry (15).

 

Learning outcomes

• Understand what embedded research teams are and their role improving service integration
• Learn how researchers-in-residence work and what skills/support are needed
• Explore methodological, practical, and ethical opportunities and challenges
• Develop strategies for sustainable embedded research
• Build connections for a community of practice (e.g., Special Interest Group)

 

Implications: This approach represents a cultural shift away from linear, reductionist, and siloed methods often employed when evaluating and implementing integrated care to an approach that embraces complexity. It enables the development of bespoke, relational services shaped by both data and stories, and supported by system stewardship. Using the researcher-in-residence approach in Integrated Care Systems anchors and pools resources for sustainable academia-practice partnerships combining rigour and relevance, implementation and impact, and supporting continuous learning, rapid evaluation, and improvement.

 

References:

1.Impact of ‘Enhanced’ Intermediate Care (2022); https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5665

2.Integrating the voluntary sector (2022); https://doi.org/10.1108/JICA-02-2020-0010

3.Context in Complex System Change (2020); https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5196

4.Multi-Agency Transitions for Young People (2025); https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.9055

5.Social prescribing ‘holistic’ link-worker (2019); https://doi.org/10.1017/S1463423619000598

6.Impact of COVID-19 on social prescribing (2022); https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13802

7.Community Cancer Champions’ Project (2025); https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.9054

8.Peer coaching for adults with long-term conditions (2024); https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2024-087020

9.Targeted telephone-based case management (2022); https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08415-2

10.VCFSE in Early Help (2023); https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.13034

11.Family support in a seaside resort (2024); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.103943

12.Housing and children’s social care (2024); https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2024.2419527

13.Reflections on the Researcher-in-Residence model (2019); https://doi.org/10.1332/174426419X15538508969850

14.Ecotherapy Program for Adolescence (2025); https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22050720

15.Open appreciative inquiry to generate cultural change (2025); https://doi.org/10.1177/01447394251360762