About Research & Development in AWP

Why we do research

Research helps us understand how to better support people experiencing mental health problems, neurodiverse diagnoses, substance misuse, and dementia. Research is the foundation of treatments offered within the NHS.

Research can help

better understand different diagnoses;
improve NHS treatments;
discover treatments that work well;
find new treatments;
help answer questions that are important for patients, service users and carers.

Types of studies we support

Interventional studies
These studies involve introducing or changing a treatment to test the outcome (e.g. testing a new or existing medication or therapy).

Observational studies
These studies involve observing or measuring something without changing treatment (e.g. completing a survey or providing a blood sample).

How we support research

Our Research Nurses and Practitioners support AWP patients, service users, carers, and staff to access research offered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and ethically approved by the Health Research Authority (HRA).

The role of a Research Nurse or Practitioner can include:

Checking who might be able to take part in a research study;
Asking people whether they would be interested in taking part in research studies;
Carrying out assessments to see whether people can take part in a study, based on the ‘eligibility criteria’;
Providing participant information sheets, and answering any questions people may have about research studies;
Receiving informed consent from study participants;
Doing assessments to see how people are getting on with a research study;
Working with clinical teams to raise their awareness of research.

Our staff are passionate about their work.

We aim to offer the best experience of research for patients, service users, carers and staff.

Everyone Included

‘Everyone Included’ is a way of letting patients and service users know about research opportunities. We do this by post.

We assume that patients and service users would like to hear about relevant research opportunities unless they tell us otherwise.

It is always the patient’s or service user’s choice whether to take part in research. You can ‘opt out’ of Everyone Included if you wish.

You can find out more about Everyone Included on our website at:
https://www.awp.nhs.uk/about-us/research-and-development/everyone-included

Research Capability Funding (RCF)

Each year, our department has funding to support researchers to develop new research ideas and to prepare an NIHR grant application. This is called RCF.

If you have a research idea or would like to know more about RCF, please contact us.

AWP Research Community (ARC)

If you are interested in getting updates about our work, including a quarterly bulletin, please contact us.

Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE)

We recognise that research should always be in the interests of those affected by an issue.

We work with researchers to help them think about ways to involve patients, service users, carers, and the public in research studies.

We value the role of PPIE in our working practices.

To find out more about our PPIE activities, please email: awp.researchinvolvement@nhs.net

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI)

Our team are about passionate embedding EDI throughout our work.

We try to:

promote an inclusive culture within our team;
encourage our staff to keep learning about different populations, so they can best support the people taking part in research;
offer research opportunities that are relevant to our diverse patient, service user, carer and staff populations;
improve access to research opportunities where we can, so that people can take part;
encourage those who have wider influence over the design of research to think about their role in improving EDI.