How peer research can have a big impact for local communities: A Q&A with Melody from Garelochhead Station Trust, and Christian from Men Behaving Dadly

Melody is part of Garelochhead Station Trust (GST), a charity that supports veterans, their families and the wider community in a rural community in Scotland. GST worked with researchers, Professor. Sarah-Anne Munoz and Dr. Liz Ellis, who were based at the University of Highlands and Islands Division of Rural Health and Wellbeing.

Christian is from Men Behaving Dadly, a group that supports Dad’s in Oldham to connect with their children through play. Through The Ideas Fund the group are working with Dr Robert Bendall based at University of Salford University.

First, could you tell us a bit about your organisations and your research projects?

Christian: I’m part of a group called Men Behaving Dadly. We meet every Saturday morning, and we’re all about giving Dads a safe space to come, bring the kids, have a brew and get to know each other. It’s a great place where Dads can spend time with their kids, too. Dad’s can struggle to play with their kids, or feel under confident when they’re doing it, and this space really enables them to come and not feel judged. We’ve got Lego and crafts and loads of different activities they can get involved in.

The group has been running for 20 years now, so there’s a lot of children that have grown up together. We have an older dad too whose daughter is in her 20s now and she volunteers with the group. With our research, we’ve been looking at the benefits of play for Dads and male carers, but as with any research project, the scope has got a lot bigger from when we first started.

Melody: We’re a baby project compared to Christians! We’ve only been running for five years. We’re based just northwest of Glasgow, in an extremely rural area. We have a navy base quite close to us, so we have a lot of veterans in our community. People leave the military and decide to stay here because it’s a really beautiful area.

The military is a very regimented way of life, and you come out into civilian street and all of a sudden all of that structure is gone. And there’s a real sense of loss. So the initial thought behind our organisation was, how do we help people to not feel as lost? There’s an awful lot of isolation in our community. The majority of our veterans are men of an older generation, who are notoriously bad at keeping things in and not opening up. So the charity was born to help them and their families integrate with the wider community and try to make them feel less isolated.

We have fortnightly brunches where everybody comes together. The first time we had it we served 17 people and last week we sat 62. We also have a model making group, an arts and crafts group and a line dancing group. We find that people actually do more chatting than they do anything else. It’s all about the contact. From the minute they enter the room to the minute they leave, they’re chatting.

We’re seeing people leaving the military younger now. So they’re not going straight into retirement but they’re going into different kinds of workplaces, which can be a huge adjustment. So we’ve got services to support people through that too.

The focus of our research was really asking, are we doing everything we need to be doing as an organisation? Can we be doing more?

Christian: I’m an ex-Matelot, so I totally understand the complexities of being in the forces and then out of the forces. When you’re in, you’re looked after. It’s like you’ve never really left home. And when you leave, you suddenly have to stand on your own two feet and find work, pay your bills, organise a doctor’s appointment, and it’s hard. When you’re in the forces, that’s all done for you. It’s a very, very different way of life.

How did you find the process of collaborating with a researcher? Were there any challenges?

Christian: Rob, our researcher, was amazing. We went through the process of interviewing people and picking a researcher and we chose Rob because he was invested from day one and was really excited about what we were achieving.

There were definitely challenges at the beginning. Rob came in and we started discussing the research, and let’s just say his academic language far surpassed any of the Dads’ language! So one of the biggest challenges was learning what he actually meant when he said certain things, which was actually quite funny. We all went on a learning journey together, which meant that by the end we all had a huge sense of achievement. I feel like we achieved a heck of a lot.

Melody: Our researchers, Sarah-Anne and Liz, were also amazing. They really connected with what the charity was about. They interviewed the trustees and then we organised focus groups and some one-to-one interviews with our members, so we could find out what we were getting right and what we needed to improve. We have ten trustees and five of us became peer researchers too.

The participants were fantastic. I had to write up the transcripts from the focus groups and it was absolute bedlam! But it was lovely that they had so much to say and it was amazing to hear how much the organisation had impacted them.

How was your experience of doing peer research?

Melody: I think the biggest value of doing peer research for us was the skills we learnt. Sarah-Anne and Liz talked us through how to do an interview, how to read people’s body language and respond to it. Sometimes we would go in and the participant would have their arms crossed and we’d know they were closing down. So we learnt how to approach it differently, change our stance and ask a different question to try and help them relax into it. It’s taught me not only how to do interviews, but how to interact with people in daily life.

Chris: The experience was invaluable, because it gave us enough of an insight into how academic research is done, but allowed us to put our own twist on it. Academic research can be very niche and separate from the real world. I think we got more of a response from people we spoke to because we weren’t academics. We were just Dads talking to other Dads. It was for a small local charity that was really invested in the community. We weren’t going to just produce a paper and do nothing with it. We were doing it to really try and have an impact locally.

The outreach process in particular was amazing. It worked so well just going out into the community and speaking to people about the research and asking them questions. We asked about their favourite childhood memories and if they played with their parents. Doing that prompted them to think about what they did now and how it affected them. We got qualitative responses, rather than just yes or no answers, which gave us a much bigger understanding of everything.

Outreach was scary though! It’s daunting going out into the big wide world and trying to talk to people. But it was a great sense of achievement at the end of the day.

Melody: Definitely. I think when you’ve never been part of a research project before, it’s absolutely terrifying. You think, oh my goodness, I don’t know how to do this. But when we actually sat down with Sarah-Anne and Liz and discussed it, we realised that a focus group or an interview is essentially just a chat.

Doing peer research was also really good for building relationships with our members. I purposefully interviewed people who I didn’t have strong relationships with, and people who were a little bit more on the outside of our community. Having the opportunity to sit down one-to-one and hear more about their stories was really phenomenal. It’s changed the way I interact with them now.

How would you sum up your experience being part of The Ideas Fund?

Melody: I’d say the experience was terrifying, educational, rewarding and exciting!

Chris: I agree with all of that. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster. But it’s been a very guided process. We’ve been supported by The Ideas Fund and our researcher throughout. I was nervous at first because it’s a bit weird doing stuff like this if you’ve not done it before. But to sit back at the end of the project and actually take note of what you’ve achieved over the course of it – that’s amazing.

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A big thank you to Melody and Christian for sharing their insights into peer research. If you want to find out more about their projects check out their websites, Garelochhead Station Trust and Men Behaving Dadly.

Interested in learning more about The Ideas Fund and how it works? Watch this space for more of our upcoming conversations from the projects involved.