We’d like to take a moment to say goodbye and a huge thank you to someone who may possibly be the longest standing research in practice Link Officer in our 15 year history.
Vaughan Tudor-Williams has been Link Officer at Portsmouth since 1997, a year after research in practice began. Vaughn has been a tireless champion of evidence-informed practice, building networks of strategic and frontline colleagues in order to get our resources to those that need them. As Celia Atherton, our founding Director recalls, ‘Vaughn just got it. He was a genuine early adopter of the evidence-informed practice agenda and the value that partnership in our network could offer to his colleagues’.
Vaughan shares four main tips on how to get the most from being a Link Officer:
- The Link Officer role is best supported when Partner agencies recognise it is a distinct role and include it within a job description
- Develop networks and champions within the senior management team – make sure those colleagues are kept informed about what’s on offer and that they can access networks of interest with senior colleagues across the partnership network
- Be proactive in seeking RiP support - there's plenty of it, willingly given - and also in feeding back on what works, what doesn't and what your organisation needs. It is a partnership and that normally involves giving as well as receiving
- Remember there's far more to research in practice than just the learning events programme and there are more ways of encouraging evidence-informed practice than just using research in practice resources. What RiP can do is help focus your thinking and identify where to get further information from.
Having done a great job for us, we are pleased to say, the benefits have been mutual. Talking to Vaughn he says our regular briefings, bulletins and reviews have been ‘an endless help’ to him in the policy roles that have been his ‘day job’. ‘The latest RPU, for instance, has an article on contact which will be of great interest to colleagues as that’s a major issue here in Portsmouth at present’.
