Research
At Norfolk Community Foundation we believe people and communities have the best understanding of what they need and should be able to shape the places they live and the services they use.
Drawing on our extensive experience in local grant making, Norfolk Community Foundation are uniquely positioned to carry out community research. Using the insight gathered, we facilitate connections between communities and local partners so that together, we can build sustainable, community-owned solutions across Norfolk.
Community research is about gathering new knowledge, insights and experiences within communities to help build understanding and lead to positive change. This includes ‘peer research’, where people with lived experience of the issues being studied are involved in designing and carrying out the research.
Our aim is to ensure that the knowledge and experiences of the community are heard and understood, and that they have the power and agency to shape what happens in their lives and neighbourhoods. This helps us to be able to understand what our communities need, to tell the story and impact of our work, and understand the best way to design and deliver services.
Our research supports our wider work:
- Empowering communities to understand what’s important to them, communicate this, and take action.
- Identifying areas to target funding and support where we know it will make a difference.
- Sharing community insight with our partners, such as local authorities, the Integrated Care Board and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner, to help shape their work.
“We learned lots of info that will be a voice for our migrant community and we can also use in funding bids for the future… we all loved it!”
Research
Our unique position as a Community Foundation in Norfolk enables us to work collaboratively across sectors to understand the opportunities and challenges in Norfolk communities.
Seldom Heard Voices
We facilitated this Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System partnership project with Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care System and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, using our close links with Community Partners.
This report draws on research conducted by community groups working with refugee and forced migrant communities, and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, to explore experiences of accessing NHS mental health services and emotional wellbeing support. The report was prepared and presented by Norfolk Community Foundation.
Together for Women and Girls
Last year, on International Women’s Day, we launched a survey that over 300 Norfolk women and girls responded to, telling us about their experiences – both positive and negative.
We also funded local charities to run focus groups, allowing us to further explore the experiences of Norfolk women in a safe, female only environment where trust meant that conversations flowed naturally and honestly. Over 100 women participated in this activity. We were delighted by the positive response to our survey and focus group funding and by the richness of the insight that has emerged from this research.
From this information, we produced a report analysing the survey data and focus group feedback to discover what it’s really like for women and girls in Norfolk today. Not only will this report inform our grant funding when it comes to the Together for Women and Girls programme, but we hope that it also provides a robust base for creating systems change at a countywide level.
Community Research
At Norfolk Community Foundation, we’re two years into building our own quiet rebellion, challenging the status quo that says that quantitative data and evidence is the only route to understanding communities and that solutions to local challenges are best developed by policy makers and change experts. We are working in partnership with local charitable organisations to find out:
- How to build the knowledge, skills and capability of people with lived experience to design and conduct research.
- What issues local communities feel are most important to them and how community-based research could help us to collectively understand them better.
- How we can link the insight generated through community research to influence local funding strategies and the design and delivery of services and programmes.