During the first half of this year, DCF’s Insights Team worked with colleagues Alice and Carla at Involve Mid-Devon to explore the notion of VCSE ‘research readiness’. Supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and the VCSE Assembly, we investigated community engagement in research through a more ambitious understanding of the potential scope of collaborative, participatory relationships with trusted VCSE sector partners. The report from this project is now available on the DCF website. The project report explores the role of small VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) sector organisations as valued -indeed essential – mediators and connectors in the research system because they have trusted relationships reaching into underserved communities (which, let’s be honest, many academic institutions often struggle to achieve).

We contend that community familiarity is a precursor to genuine agency in research design. We argue that ‘research readiness’ is an incremental, ‘whole system’ question, based on parity that requires all research partners to work towards mobilising a much wider range of skills, assets and experience, with an ultimate aim of improving the reach, quality, efficiency and relevance of research. We also demonstrate that there are high levels of research-related expertise within the VCSE sector, which challenge the binary understanding which opposes institutional research capacity with community-based ‘lived experience’.