Facilitators and challenges in partnership research aimed at improving social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

PURPOSE: To identify partnership research challenges and facilitators, as experienced by members of the Inclusive Society (IS) initiative. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A case study was conducted on all partnership research projects conducted between 2017 and 2019 under the IS initiative through surveys, interviews with the IS community, logbooks, and focus group. Thematic analysis and descriptive analysis were undertaken. RESULTS: To work effectively with a diversity of stakeholders, winning conditions must be created for the project from the outset. These include determining the team functioning, project objectives, the expectations of each party, and agreeing on a realistic action plan. Project implementation with concern for sustained stakeholder commitment, good working relationships, and achieving project objectives requires organizational planning that favours partner involvement, shared leadership, agreed methods for communicating, conflict resolution methods, recognition of each participant's expertise, and creating a climate of trust. Upon concluding a partnership research project, it is essential to devote time to implement project results in local environments and to ascertain their usefulness to partners.IS partnership research challenges and facilitators are similar to those identified in past research. Despite this knowledge, challenges persist. Future research could explore tools and practices from other domain to overcome partnership research challenges.

Partnership research has the potential to contribute to a more inclusive society for people with disabilities.Challenges and facilitators are identified for the stages of creating, implementing, and completing a partnership research project.Suggested solutions are offered to facilitate the conduct of a partnership research project and to increase the project's chances of success.Partnership research could benefit from using tools from other fields such as community development and social innovation to successfully implement some of the facilitators and overcome specific barriers to partnership research.

Strengths and limitations of the Inclusive Society research model: an autoethnography.

Purpose: The Inclusive Society partnership research model aims to promote change in society for people with disabilities by supporting research teams composed of researchers and partner organizations. The objective of this article is to identify the strengths and limitations of this research model.Material and methods: An autoethnography approach was used. Thematic analysis of four methods was undertaken: semi-directed interviews with members of the research teams funded by Inclusive Society (researchers, partners), a focus group with the Inclusive Society's intersectoral collaboration agents, their logbooks, and Inclusive Society's annual reports.Results: Strengths and limitations of the Inclusive Society model were identified through their networking activities, the role and support of the intersectoral collaboration agents and the partnership research program.Conclusions: Networking activities are an essential element of Inclusive Society. They are indispensable for composing intersectoral research teams that will work on answering needs of people with disabilities. Intersectoral collaboration agents are also a strength of the model, but their role could be clarified to better frame what tasks are in their scope of practice and what the research teams could ask from them. Finally, the research program eligibility criteria could be improved to support, among others, the projects' appropriation phases.

Networking activities stimulate the creation of intersectoral research teams centered on answering the needs of people with disabilities that are identified in the fieldHired facilitators can play an important role in the emergence of research teams, merging the academic and non-academic worlds, and supporting the teams during their research projectIn participatory research projects, some funding should be reserved to support the partner organization's participation and the appropriation phase of the research projects.

Paid worker and unfamiliar partner communication training: A scoping review.

BACKGROUND: Communication partner training could be employed to train people working in the community to facilitate interaction with individuals who live with a variety of communication disorders. However, current evidence syntheses are limited to a single disorder (e.g., aphasia) and focus on a variety of familiar and unfamiliar communication partners. An understanding of the scope of literature across the evidence-base of acquired neurological populations may provide a better basis to develop interventions and future research tailored for community workers. AIMS: To explore the scope of literature on paid worker and unfamiliar partner communication training for acquired neurogenic communication disorders with a focus on describing: 1) the types of communication disorders addressed by interventions; 2) the types of learners who received the interventions; 3) the nature of the interventions; and 4) the reported effects on trainees and people with a communication disorder. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A scoping review was conducted. Studies were selected by a systematic keyword search, undertaken through four databases. Eligibility criteria included studies that: (i) reported an intervention directed at paid workers or unfamiliar partners where the primary goal was to improve communication with people with acquired neurogenic communication disorders, (ii) reported original results, (iii) contained quantitative or qualitative data on the effects of the intervention, (iv) were written in English or French and (v) were published in a peer-reviewed journal. The PRISMA-ScR was used to guide design and reporting of the scoping review. RESULTS: Seventy publications met the inclusion criteria. Interventions were mostly disorder-specific and addressed communication with people with dementia, aphasia or traumatic brain injury. 15/70 studies examined training programs that were not restructured to a specific population (e.g., aphasia). Learners were mostly working or studying in the healthcare field and only 2/70 studies included community workers without primarily health training. Sixty different interventions were reported and were mostly delivered by speech-language pathologists. Training varied in terms of duration (a few minutes to 46 h) and content, but many shared training methods (e.g., presentation of theory on communication disorders). Nearly all studies demonstrated positive results, 23/26 studies suggested that paid worker and unfamiliar partner communication training may increase the knowledge of trainees, 24/26 studies suggested that it could improve their confidence when interacting with people with a communication disorder and 44/46 studies suggested that it could improve the trainees' communication abilities. CONCLUSION: A small developing evidence-base exists for communication training programs for paid and unfamiliar communications partners that focuses beyond a single diagnosis or disorder. However, there is very limited knowledge on interventions for community workers from non-health professions. Future research should focus on the evaluation of existing programs tailored to, or explicitly designed for this context with the aim of identifying active ingredients that lead to improved and sustainable outcomes.