Community engagement

Gab Hodge carried out interviews with members of DCAL and sent around an open-ended questionnaire about past, present and future community engagement practices at DCAL. These responses helped us to identify what we have done effectively in the past and continue to do, and how we can improve. Here we summarise the outcomes of those conversations and responses.

Before we can start to think about the future of our community engagement at DCAL, we first need to ask who the community is. This is where the lines have become blurred, some people refer to community as the deaf community whereas others see community as our community of stakeholders. This document will concern the latter.

Some things people commented that DCAL have been successful in:

• Two way communication: In the past we have managed to create successful two-way communication with the communities that we work with. This theme came up time and time again, the need in all our engagement activities to allow for conversational exchange. DCAL should aim not to only present and discuss our work, but also listen and learn from those we are trying to engage with.
• Going to people: Previously DCAL has travelled to different audiences, for example, the BSL Corpus roadshow. For the future we should try to expand our reach, both ideologically and geographically. We should aim to attend events that deaf people attend, as well as conferences attended by those who specialise in our research interests. Sometimes there are cross-over events, for example the 'Bridging the Gap' conference, that historically DCAL has not attended. Our reach has been very much London-centric, but with the advance of video technology there is a real opportunity to reach people across the UK and beyond in both the events we attend and those we create.
• Identifiable researchers: Having presenters that people can identify with is good practice, and researchers/members of research teams who present their own work, for example for the deaf community receiving information in in BSL, has a greater impact. This direct access from the researcher is very much appreciated. Where possible researchers/presenters should present in BSL when presenting to the deaf community. We should be mindful of the labour on deaf staff in this aspect and this should be acknowledged and potentially recognised in terms of appraisals, etc.
• BSL content: Our website has BSL content. More new and frequent BSL and captioned content direct from the researchers would be great (this is being addressed in part through the development of Lay Summaries).

Some areas which need improvement:

• Reaching a diverse audience: diverse in location, ethnicity, education and language use etc.
• Engaging with stakeholders: DCAL should aim engage with communities at all stages of research, including the development and design of research proposals. Additionally, when engaging with deaf community, short informative jargon-free talks, interactive activities are more successful.
• Collaboration: DCAL should aim to develop more tailored events to specific stakeholders as well as creating open events, inviting other academics, community members and practitioners to specific events to find out what research are they conducting, what is important to them? Are there any overlaps with the work we're doing at DCAL?
• Links between research and the real world: More emphasis can be put into demonstrating why our research is important and how it has benefits which can permeate the Deaf community and improve Deaf lives, and how we need the help of the deaf community in shaping our research agenda and carrying out research. Examples of practical applications of our research have been successful in this regard.
• Measuring success of engagement: Alternative ways of measuring impact by collecting information about what people gained/learned from the experience. At the moment, we mostly rely on anecdotal accounts of a few individuals, so it would be better to have a more comprehensive understanding of whether our goals are achieved.
• How stakeholders view us: Our engagement with audiologists and medical professionals can be enhanced and improved, there are some current initiatives at DCAL but we need to develop this further. Some practitioners feel DCAL is only about sign language and don't feel our research is relevant to them because they work mainly with deaf children with cochlear implants. At the same time, the language used when communicating with these stakeholders needs to be sensitive to the deaf community regardless of whether they sign or not.

One running theme throughout the conversations was that we should be targeting different stakeholders separately and developing specific communications for them so when planning engagement activities we must ask:

• Who do WE want to communicate with?
• What do THEY want to know from us?
• What do WE want to communicate?
• How will WE do this?
• What will THEY get from us?
• How will WE measure the outcome

If you would like the full copy of the DCAL and Community Engagement Review please send a request to Indie.