After a week off holidaying, I have returned to the office to put the finishing touches on the draft of our practice guidance.  The study’s advisory committee are now commenting on the initial draft and I am currently implementing any changes that they have suggested for improvements.  In the next couple of weeks, we will send it out far and wide for comments in a consultation process, and refine it further according to what the people included at this stage think.

The practice guidance is essentially a manual which acts a as a reference guide for workers using the intervention.  It explains each part of the process, and gives gold standard approaches as well as lots of case studies from the research that has been completed to bring the guide to life.  The manual is colourful and contains photographs and extracts from websites from some of the participating agencies – all of this endeavouring to make it as easy-to-use, and attractive-to-use, as possible.  Alongside the practice guidance, training is being developed.  The practice guidance gives the ‘what things are’ of the intervention, and the training the ‘how things are done’ to fit with it.

We aim to gain as many different perspectives as possible during the intervention consultation process in order to ensure that the feedback we receive is full and comprehensive.  We are therefore going to be consulting a wide range of people: service users, volunteers, workers, management, associated agencies, advisory agencies, experts in the field of social capital, commissioners….the list goes on!  If you would like to be involved in the consultation process, then we would like to hear from you.  Your viewpoint will be unique and therefore of interest to us!  Email me on hannah.reidy@kcl.ac.uk for more information.