The Lines Between

Our first clinical supervision sessions of 2025 are underway with counsellor jane davidson MBACP (accred). Crises, difficulties and challenging experiences are often explored in our research – for example, we are currently researching barriers to accessing mental health services and substance use recovery support - and our team work hard to embed empathetic, trauma-informed approaches in all our engagement with research participants.   We recognise that this means that our staff might need a little support themselves, so everyone at TLB has a quarterly session with Jane. This time can be used flexibly, depending on each team member’s needs. It might mean reflecting on a difficult piece of fieldwork, working on self-development in their role, or simply taking an hour to talk through balancing work and family life.    This support has been a huge boost to the team since it was first trialled two years ago, and we’d urge all researchers to identify the support needs of the delivery team – as well as participants – while planning for projects on sensitive subjects.

📄 Report Published! NNECL (National Network for the Education of Care Leavers) have just published our evaluation of their Quality Mark, an accreditation system for higher education providers. The Quality Mark evidences their approach to inclusion, and how they support students with care experience or those who are estranged from families. Key Findings: ✔️ Institutional commitment to the NNECL Quality Mark, embedding it in their strategies to improve outcomes for learners with care experience ✔️ Improved student outcomes, including positive changes in retention, attainment, and student wellbeing ✔️ Better collaboration between internal and external colleagues, partners, and agencies ✔️ Increased visibility and awareness of the challenges care-experienced students face All 12 institutions involved in the evaluation reported that the Quality Mark provides value for money, given its impact on policy and practice. NNECL have called on the government to make the Quality Mark mandatory for all post-16 learning spaces, to improve educational outcomes for young people with care experience across the UK. You can find a link to the report in the comments:

📜 New report published! Throughout 2024, our researchers worked with The Scottish Government’s Children and Families Directorate on a review of Scotland’s 2023-26 Children’s Services Plans (CSPs). These Plans describe how Children’s Services Planning partners, including local authorities, health boards and third sector organisations will deliver services and support to improve outcomes for children, young people and families in each area. Statutory Guidance sets out core CSP criteria, such as a focus on rights and wellbeing and evidence-based strategic priorities. Our team undertook a detailed review of each report and analysed the extent to which the criteria were achieved. Through this work we learned about the range of services involved in meeting the varied needs of children and families across different areas of Scotland. It brought us a detailed understanding of the children's services delivery landscape; approaches to planning; and connections to commitments such as UNCRC, eradicating child poverty, GIRFEC and The Promise. The full report is available here: https://lnkd.in/eZD_cU4K

🎯 Our team had a fantastic time at TLB’s quarterly staff social last week. We kicked off the evening with a few games of darts at Flight Club Darts in the St James Quarter and then headed for a 10/10 dinner at Ka Pao. We find team building and social events like these helpful in developing a cohesive and motivated team – they help to boost morale and build a healthier work culture. Congrats to Ian Christie who was the big winner at Flight Club - our takeaway from the night is that darts absolutely IS a sport!! 🏆

Carole Kelly, one of our Senior Consultation Analysts, attended a two-day training course run by The Social Research Association on focus group design and facilitation earlier this week. The course comprehensively covered all aspects of designing and delivering focus groups in social research, including how to manage a wide variety of situations and sensitive topics, as well as factors to consider in the analysis and write up. She felt the training was of excellent quality, with a lot of useful material presented expertly by the trainer, Dr Karen Lumsden, who argued that focus groups can be helpful in presenting “different ways of storying the data”. Carole was reassured that The Lines Between approach was aligned to the guidance given for how to sensitively deliver high quality focus groups, with key personal learnings to be mindful that the data should be considered in the discursive context in which it was generated. In other words, discussion between the participants influences what is said or not said, so the group dynamics shape the overall narrative. #socialresearch #training #upskilling

Scottish Book Trust's Live Literature programme is a brilliant initiative which offers funding for schools, libraries and arts and community groups to host events by Scottish authors. Read more about it and how to apply below!

Presenting findings is an important and rewarding part of our work as social researchers. We enjoy developing engaging presentations to provoke discussion and help bring findings to life, like this example from a dissemination session delivered by Ian Christie and Lorraine Simpson earlier this week.   This shows recommendations from our evaluation of the Negotiated Stopping pilot approach for COSLA and Public Health Scotland, which we shared with the National Gypsy/Traveller Officer Group yesterday. A link to the full report is available in the comments below.

👩🎓 Training and Learning 📚 At The Lines Between, we love expanding our knowledge, and lunchtime webinars have been a very valuable way of doing that! Recently, our team attended two fascinating sessions:   'How AI Shapes Human Morality' – A webinar from The Social Research Association explored how cultural values shape AI decision-making. Research showed that moral choices—such as who an autonomous vehicle should prioritise in a collision—vary depending on societal norms. We also learned that AI may behave more ethically during testing than in real-world scenarios, indicating that they have learned to be aware of when they are being tested and to act accordingly.   Data Visualisation – We also joined the UK Evaluation Society webinar, 'How to make information visual (= clear + beautiful)', led by Sara Vaca. The session highlighted how clear, meaningful visualisations can enhance engagement with research findings. Our team is excited to apply these insights to help make our research more accessible to different audiences and to make our work even more impactful!

📢 Report Published: Evaluating Negotiated Stopping for Roadside Camps in Scotland 📢 We are pleased to share our latest published report on the Negotiated Stopping model. This report, commissioned by COSLA and Public Health Scotland, evaluated the 2019-2022 pilot of the negotiated stopping approach, seeking to improve conditions for Gypsy/Traveller communities, while also improving relationships with settled communities.    The report explores key challenges and makes recommendations on the importance of accessible land, facilities, and services to improve the lives of these communities.   Next week, Lorraine Simpson and Ian Christie look forward to presenting findings from the evaluation to the Gypsy Traveller Officer Group, which brings together staff from Scotland's 32 local authorities. Check out the full report📄here:

On Monday, our new Research Officer Laura Mallis attended online training run by Snap Surveys. The interesting and insightful course covered questionnaire design, with helpful guidance on: ·      creating engaging surveys ☑️ ·      setting different question and response types ☑️ ·      survey routing ☑️ We regularly use Snap - recent examples include our survey of stakeholders as part of scoping work to develop a mental health patient experience survey for The Scottish Government, a questionnaire in the final stages of our application of the Delphi methodology exploring substance use harm prevention for Public Health Scotland, and a survey of further and higher education institutes who have adopted the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers Quality Assurance Mark. We're looking forward to applying learning from the course in our surveys throughout 2025 and beyond!