Involving Users, Empowering Communities, Verifying Results Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006 Understanding and tackling ethnic inequalities in health.

Involving Users, Empowering Communities, Verifying Results

Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006

Understanding and tackling ethnic inequalities in healthAn ESRC Research Seminar Series: 5

Monday April 24th 2006

‘Cultural Competence in Health & Social Research:Emic and Etic Perspectives (My View or Their View)’

Structure

- Theoretical model

- Overview of RAPAR

- Researching in action: intervening, interrogating, organising…

- Reactions ….

- Current situation


Meta-theory: language creation from below (1)

All research is communicated and interpreted through language-based

Aims Text……

Methods

Results

Analyses

1 + 2 = 3

(Moran and Butler 2001:61)


Meta-theory: language creation from below (2)

The importance of language in the research process,

its impact upon the

• Formation of research questions• Methods adopted• Resultant findings• Analysis• Dissemination

is rarely recognised or explored

(Moran and Butler 2001:61)


Meta-theory: language creation from below (3)Volosinov (1986 (1929)), disappeared in 1930’s Stalinist purges:



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate - Reality is both objective and intersubjective



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate- Reality is both objective and intersubjective- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate- Reality is both objective and intersubjective- Intersubjective reality is fundamentally affected by socioeconomic(cultural) position- Competing views of reality held by different population groups co-exist in space and time



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate- Reality is both objective and intersubjective- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position- Competing views of reality held by different population groups co-exist in space and time- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of communicating reality



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate- Reality is both objective and intersubjective- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position- Competing views of reality held by different population groups co-exist in space and time- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of communicating reality- What comes to prominence results from the contest: it is a refraction, not reflection, of reality



- Experience of human reality is communicated through language- Critical purpose of language is to communicate- Reality is both objective and intersubjective- Intersubjective (between people) reality is fundamentally affected by socioeconomic[cultural] position- Competing views of reality held by different population groups co-exist in space and time- Continual process of struggle, ‘contest’, over what the dominant meaning of reality is, and over means of communicating reality- What comes to prominence results from the contest: it is a refraction, not reflection, of reality- How has this approach helped to shape the participatory action research process?Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006

Physical Context: Social- economic- cultural- political

Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government

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Dominant Ideologies

Super-ordinate, refracted views about health/asylum seeking

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Dominant Ideologies


Communicative action between people about health/asylum

Contests over who is the person seeking asylum & why are they

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Dominant Ideologies



PERSON SEEKING ASYLUMThe ‘inner speech’

deriving from their lived experienceRESEARCHER/PRACTITIONER


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Dominant Ideologies

Super-ordinate, refracted views bout health/asylum seeking


PERSON SEEKING ASYLUMTheir ‘inner speech’,

deriving from their lived experienceRESEARCHER/PRACTITIONER

Action/Language Language/ActionPAR PAR


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RAPAR is:

An acronym for Refugee and Asylum seeker Participatory Action Research

Spring 2001 - RAPAR network forms in response to introduction of forced dispersal, seedcorn funding follows (Moran et al, 2002)

A collection of organisations and individuals well placed to create evidence bases about the needs of communitiesin the North West of England where people fleeing persecutionhave been dispersed by central government

An action network that begins to inductively developconstructive responses to evidence bases about need that derive from the lived experience of asylum

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Traditional maintenance of separation of researcher from both subject and subjects being studied…

Researcher Practitioner Community member/ client/user

Skills Experience Experience (work) (life)

Explicitrole/ Objectivity Objectivity Subjectivityposition (about (about client) (about service/life)

research Subjectivity issue) (about practice)


Specificplaces/spaces/sites

E.g. service delivery setting

E.g. Public or private space

CommunityMember/Client/

User

Practitioner

Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:

e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government

Material Context: Social- economic- cultural- political

Researcher

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CommunityMember/Client/

User

Practitioner

Material conditions, specifically situated in time and space:

e.g. housing, employment, mix of people, form of government


Researcher

Interaction

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CommunityMember/Client/ User

Practitioner



Researcher

RAPAR

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What is PAR? • PAR is predicated on the democratic notion that

oppressed and marginalized people can transform their social realities through education, research and action, while forwarding their own value system. People can empower themselves through examining their own situations…

• Praxis as defined by Friere is a combination of action and reflection:

Praxis without action is verbalism; while praxis without reflection is activism

(Udas, 1998:603)


RAPAR

Feb- Mar 2002 - RAPAR limited company and charity in process of development

May 2002 - RAPAR’s bid to lead SRB5 project in Salford approved:

“to develop evidence about needs and action inservices with refugee people seeking asylum”(Private Eye 2005)

Oct 2002 – First destitution presentation (Moran, 2003)


Oct 2002 – Disseminates about destitution to Accommodator

Oct 2002 – Destitute man imprisoned:

When people come to this country, applied for asylum, been refused and have gone right through the appeals system, they can end up in the situation of the man I visited….without the right to work, without support and without accommodation: i.e. destitute. It should be no surprise that a person in such a situation resortsto crime in order to live. My view is that in a civilized society, no-one should be left in that situation: support should be maintained until either the individual leaves the country or his status here is resolved.” Email correspondence from Reverend to author, 31.10.02 17:58:52

RAPAR and the SALFORD RAPAR SRB5 PROJECTR

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Learning Opportunity with RAPAR

hosted by the

Revans Institute for Action Learning and Research,

University of Salford, Thursday 5th June, 2003

Mother facing eviction into destitution:

“after everyone has tried to help me I am feeling better. My GP visited me he told me he would try to help me. The assessment people came and told me, 2 or 3 times ‘we believe you’. I told them:

‘I have 2 arms and 2 eyes and think about me… what I have left…think about me… I am not a piece of paper’.”


Overview of case example:

All the persons involved in the case – service users, service providers, community members – have been anonymised and the real- time framework within which the events occurred has been removed.

Our purpose being:

To create a constructive atmosphere, free from the drive to find one – or some – to blame, within which we can all learn for the future.



What is participatory action research?

Research that captures what is going on in the world and understands what is happening to the selves involved in the research as moments of intersection between their biography and history within society. (Building on from Wright Mills, 1959)

Research conducted by a mutually respectful collective interested in ‘the practical application of ideas to material reality so that incomplete and inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact’ (Building on from Lenin, 1972: 111)


What is the purpose of participatory action research?

To understand an idea one must be able to apply it in practice, and to understand a situation one must be able to change it. Verbal description is not command enough. [We describe successful theory] as consistently replicated and successful practice that distil[s] and concentrate[s] the knowledge.(Building on from Revans 1982:494)

The process by which one is transformed into the other is the scientific method and the essence of the scientific method is the experimental test. (Revans 1982:494)


The super-ordinate reaction to this experimental test has been to seek to stop the experiment:

Requisition the laboratory – occupy the place of safety (Private Eye, January 2005)

Silence the researching practitioners/clients inside of it (Miwanda Bagenda, (2006))

Dis-locate the researching practitioners/clients outside of it (Greenham and Moran (2006), Temple and Moran (2006))

BUT

The outcome of the experimental test is - as yet - unknown….(Baty, 2005: Times Higher Educational Supplement, 21st October)(Asthana, 2006: Observer Newspaper, 19th February)


The issues dealt with on a day-to-day basis included people with compounded problems, many of which arose from the forced dispersal programme. The city had other support groups dotted about and doing bits and pieces with people seeking asylum but ours was the first project to operate at a citywide level and in a very different way: by including the refugee people seeking asylum in the development of the project from the outset and by seeking to understand, document and communicate how the individual issues that presented related to the wider social context and networks within which they were located.

(Miwanda Bagenda, 2006)


Participatory action research with refugee and asylum seeking people in Manchester

(Moran et al, 2006)

RAPAR, 2006

Contact details:

RAPARThe Congolese CentreCobden HouseCobden StreetSalfordGreater ManchesterM6

Email: [email protected]@ntlworld.com

FREEPHONE: 0800 458 7598

Registered Charity 1095961 Company Limited by Guarantee 04387010

mailto:[email protected]

Involving Users, Empowering Communities, Verifying Results Rhetta Moran on behalf of RAPAR, 2006 Understanding and tackling ethnic inequalities in health.

Documents

language creation

importance of language

behalf of rapar

experience of human

views of reality

people reality

s stalinist purges

resultsrhetta moran