In our first blog post we want to introduce ourselves. We work together as part of the growing School for Social Care Research (SSCR) National Public and Practice Involvement Group. You can find out a little bit more about some of the current group members below and what public involvement in social care research means to us all.
Natalie Hay
About me
I’m a parent, teacher and children’s rights campaigner, based in South West London where I live with my family. Much of my adult life has been shaped by my role as a carer – first as a young carer and then as a parent carer. This lived experience has given me deep insight into health, education, and social care systems, which I now use to advocate for positive change and to amplify the voice and experience of unpaid caregivers.
Professionally, I’m an experienced fully qualified teacher and a specialist dyslexia tutor (recently accredited by the British Dyslexia Association). I support children with dyslexia, train teachers in inclusive practice, and mentor parent carers through webinars, online courses, and one-to-one guidance.
I also lead Parent Carers UK, a virtual peer support community of over 4,700 families. Through this group, I offer free legal resources and template letters to empower parent carers navigating complex systems. In recognition of my work, I was honoured to receive the Highly Commended Changemaker of the Year Award from the National Association for Special Educational Needs (NASEN) in 2024 and Parent Carers UK has been nominated for a National Diversity and Inclusion Award. Additionally, I was awarded runner-up SMK* Campaigner of the Year 2025 for my grassroots inclusion campaign.
For the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of contributing to the SSCR Public Involvement Group. It’s an honour to be part of a team committed to ensuring that research in social care is meaningfully shaped by lived experience.
I am passionate about ethics, well-being, personalised learning, and the role of play, creativity and movement in cognitive psychology. Outside of work, I enjoy art, cooking, playing hockey, going to outdoor bootcamps and spending time in the sunshine with my family and friends.
Martina Smith
About me
I am a university researcher working with the School for Social Care Research to support the development of public involvement and equality, diversity and inclusion in social care research. I am mum to two wonderful boys, the eldest of whom has life limiting epilepsy and learning disabilities. In my free time I love cold water swimming in the lakes near where I live.
What public involvement means to me
Working together with the public, and in my context this means working together with people who use social care, people who care for a person who uses social care and people who work in social care. This is so incredibly important.
Involvement doesn’t seem like quite a strong enough word to capture what it means to me – it’s togetherness, a building of connections and relationships in research. Working together with the public is a powerful way of making sure that the research that is being done is the research that matters to the people who it is about and who might be impacted by it.
I would love to see more truly co produced social care research. To me, this means work that is co-produced right from the planning stages of any research project all the way through to sharing research findings and making change happen. I love working in co production with lots of different people as you always learn so much from one another and it’s so exciting seeing how the research can take wonderful and unexpected turns through this way of working.
Katherine Runswick-Cole
About me
Hello I’m Katherine. I am Deputy Director of the School for Social Care Research for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and for Public Engagement and Involvement. I also work at the University of Sheffield where I am Professor of Education. I work in the area of research called critical disability studies. This means that I work alongside disabled children, young people and adults and their family carers to challenge marginalisation and discrimination. I’m also the parent of two young adults, one of whom just happens to have the label of learning disability! In my free time, I love walking in the beautiful Peak District.
What public involvement means to me
I first heard the word coproduction when my son was little. I went to a meeting where the local authority told us that they wanted to work ‘in co production’ with parents of children with special educational needs.
At the meeting, they talked to us about the cuts they wanted to make to services, they asked us a few questions. After the meeting, we didn’t hear anything about whether or not what we said had changed anything. It was infuriating.
From that experience, I learned that if you ask people for their opinions you should take them seriously. You should be open to changing your plans, and to working in different ways. You also need to make sure you thank people for their time and expertise and explain to them what has changed, or not, because they were involved.
In applied research for social care, this is so important because there is lots of evidence that shows that if research is carried out with the people who are affected by the research the research will be more meaningful to them and more useful for everyone.
Jackie Dolman
About me
I am a PPI contributor working with the School for Social Care Research to bring my experience to the development and application of social care research. I have a lifetime of lived experience as a family carer for my grown up son who is autistic and has severe learning disabilities, also more recently of being a long distance carer for my dad who is now 89. I am a keen traveller in my campervan in my spare time, spending as much time visiting new places as I can, in the UK and abroad.
What public involvement means to me
I came to SSCR from a background of using my lived experience in other health and care organisations, for example NHS England, West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, the DHSC, and Inclusion North, to try and make change where myself, and other family carers, felt things could be better.
In these roles I have seen repeatedly the positive impact of having a true diversity of voices equally involved; positive for people, for services, and for policy direction and decision-making processes.
To me, working together in an equal and respectful way – with people who use care, their carers, academics, researchers, professionals, planners and politicians – is key to sharing what good care is and improving the care now offered, which I know personally is not always appropriate, kind or even safe.
Many people have been excluded from the planning and commissioning of care services and research in the past – often the people most impacted by them. It is my small hope to begin to make a difference to this and to try and ensure research leads the way in improve experiences by doing things with and for people using care rather than to them.
Margaret Ogden
About me
I am Margaret, a PPI member from Co Durham. I started out in health, then also got involved in public health. In more recent years I started PPI in projects in social care. I haven’t looked back. There have been lots of opportunities – from reviewing applications to more high profile tasks such as representing the new SSCR 4 at the Three Schools meetings. It’s been great so far and I look forward to working with the School as studies are rolled out and more opportunities crop up.
