Reducing barriers Identifying and overcoming barriers are necessary components of all research capacity building activity. In the model discussed here, barriers identified in earlier studies relating to time, funding and organizational structures, were managed through three primary strategies. The first targeted the difficulties raised by access to time and funding through securing small amounts of Flexibility and Sustainability Funding (FSF), a Department of Health funding source available to research active NHS Trusts “that allows for local discretion and management of people to support and develop patient and people driven research” (http://www.nihr.ac.uk). Successful bids for FSF funding were used to support individuals through backfilling time, enabling practitioners to conduct small scale studies, review the literature or prepare larger bids. This resulted in the submission of a succession of bids for NIHR funding. With the practitioner paired with an academic partner, this activity was maximally efficient and supported by an internal bidding process that, through detailed feedback and mentoring, ensured well designed projects. A second strategy was implemented through a further successful FSF bid to fund a Speech and Language Therapy Research Facilitator post (initially for one year). This reduced the barrier of time for the steering group and the academic partners, with the Research Facilitator taking on such roles as the management of events, liaising with Ethics Committees, and navigating different funding streams. The third strategy for overcoming organizational barriers was through the commitment of senior clinical managers within the profession and R&D teams on the Collaboration steering group, establishing a research culture at a high level. This led directly to organizational change through, for example, the explicit labeling of research activities as enhancing research consciousness and the introduction of local team research strategy meetings, each contributing to individuals’ awareness of their position within a research culture. The raised status of journal club activity, for example, was promoted to not only value this as a forum for reading and discussing new research findings, but also as a tool to support research projects through critically appraising relevant literature. The direct proportion of team members participating in research has also been increased through strategic project support from supernumerary resources, e.g. student speech and language therapists.
Interestingly, one barrier identified was a lack of research confidence amongst very able practitioners such that, despite the strategies outlined above, a perception persisted that research both took place away from the workplace (indeed, occurred in ‘ivory towers’ (p.11) [
12]) and was beyond the capability of a clinician [
12]. Such tasks as conducting literature searches were considered removed from daily clinical practice and both time and support were essential to overcome barriers of this type. A broad based definition of research was therefore regarded as important to enable the workplace to map onto research activity, again legitimizing such activities as audit, journal groups, workplace publications and formal research events within usual practice.