Skip to content

Blog post

Q Lab update: making new connections

How can the Q Lab take advantage of the number of people who want to work with the lab, and support those people to make new connections?

Read comments 7

The Q Lab is a pilot this year. We’re hoping to learn how to setup and run a lab, that ultimately has the potential to address complex problems that are affecting health and care.

One of the first tests for us was whether people would want to get involved, and so far the answer to this has been a resounding yes! There are now over 100 people signed up to be involved in the Q Lab – giving their time, energy and expertise to help address the challenge on peer support in the UK.

While our research into peer support continues in earnest, we’ve been thinking more about how to take advantage of the number of lab participants and support people to make new connections. One of the outcomes we’ll be measuring this year is whether people involved in the Lab make new relationships and collaborations, because we think this is a precursor to being able to make changes and improvements.

Some of this will happen face to face, for example at the next Lab workshop that’s taking place on 13-14 July. But due to the sheer number of people, the spread across the UK and how valuable people’s time is, we need to use other methods to support this.

To date, we’ve trialled a fortnightly update to Lab participants to give a summary of what has happened in the Lab over the last two weeks, what’s coming up and giving active ways for people to get involved. We’ve also held our first webinar and started to conduct some ethnographic interviews with people.

This week, we are contacting all of the Lab participants to launch the Lab profile cards.

The Lab profile cards will be short and snappy introduction cards that provide some high level information about everyone who is involved with the Lab. A rough example of my profile card is here.

These aren’t designed to be formal or hierarchical. Instead, we hope they’ll explain a little bit about who we all are as individuals. They should act as an invitation for people to start making connections.

This is a trial and so we will need to understand whether people are happy to share their information with us and with each other, and whether it does lead to action.

In the coming weeks, we will also be launching a Lab virtual space. This will be a simple place for people to have conversations and to share information with each other. This functionality is built into the Q website and is already being trialled by some of the Special Interest Groups.

If you’ve got any suggestions about how else we can support people involved in the Lab to connect, or you’d like to find out more about the work we’re doing in the Q Lab please do get in touch (QLab@health.org.uk).

Comments

  1. Guest

    Liz Angier 15 Jun 2017

    Thanks for setting this up Libby looking forward to getting to know the  wider lab virtually

  2. Guest

    Helen Cullington 16 Jun 2017

    Great idea with the lab profiles!  Did I miss the email/link asking for them though?  (I will chat to you about running next time I see you!)

  3. Guest

    Helen Cullington 16 Jun 2017

    oh wait ... ignore last comment, I have the profile card!

  4. Guest

    Libby Keck 16 Jun 2017

    Great to hear you're enthusiasm Liz and Helen!

    Helen - you should have received an email from the Q Lab yesterday at about 5:30pm that has the form to use. Let me know if not and we can resend it.

    Libby

  5. I really like the profile card idea.

  6. Dear Libby,

    the Lab Profile cards are great!
    They remind me of the One Page Profiles by Helen Sanderson:

    http://helensandersonassociates.co.uk/person-centred-practice/one-page-profiles/

    How do we create one?
    Best wishes
    Sebastian

  7. Hi Sebastian

    Glad you like the idea! I will pop you an email with more info about how to get involved.

    Libby

Leave a comment

If you have a Q account please log in before posting your comment.

Read our comments policy before posting your comment.

This will not be publicly visible