Community Research and Engagement Network

The Community Research and Engagement Network (COREN) was established in 2015 as a key component of the Neighbourhood Resilience Programme (NRP). It aimed to support residents to participate as equals in the programme’s nine participating neighbourhoods.

A network of third sector organisations were funded to employ a COREN facilitator in each neighbourhood, who were often residents. This enabled the NRP to benefit from existing relationships with local people. The main role of the COREN facilitators was to recruit residents and support them to get involved in the Programme.

In the NRP, the COREN facilitators and the resident advisers played a key role in developing and sustaining a process of engagement and dialogue that strengthened social connectivity across the neighbourhood systems. They were pivotal in collating the experiential knowledge of the people who lived and worked locally through resident led enquiries. They worked with others to mobilise this knowledge alongside research in the design and delivery of joint action to address root causes of health inequalities.

We sought to forge more equal relationships between residents and others in the system by: treating residents lived experience as equal to, albeit different from, research based and professional knowledge; compensating residents for costs of travel and childcare; paying a fee for residents time and expertise; supporting them to take leadership roles at meetings; and increasing their skills and knowledge through training and development opportunities. You can hear residents talk about their experience of the NRP and find out about some of the things they produced here.

Since the Neighbourhood Resilience Programme ended in 2019 the COREN has continued to provide a space for residents from many of the NW communities to forge common interests with the staff of agencies from across the public, third and private sector. They are still co-designing and co-delivering programmes of action that connect and utilise all the adaptive capacities available to local systems. You can read more about how the COREN has developed here.