The Relate Macmillan Counselling Project
Request for Expressions of Interest
for the role of Independent Researcher
The Relate Macmillan Counselling Project would like to appoint an Independent Researcher to help both develop and evaluate the project.
Background:
The Relate Macmillan Counselling Project is a partnership between Macmillan Cancer Support and Relate. It aims to support people affected by cancer, to help them improve their relationships and achieve better health and well-being outcomes. This is provided through free relationship counselling sessions and later in the project, life skills courses. This service is for family members and carers as well as the person with the cancer diagnosis and is open to anyone residing in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, South Staffordshire and Solihull.
Further details are available on the Relate Birmingham website:
Nationally it has been identified that that the number of people surviving and living with cancer is increasing. In Birmingham and the Black Country over 5000 people are diagnosed with cancer each year. A significant number will experience long term difficulties as a result of the treatment and this can have a physical, emotional and psychological impact, putting strain on relationships. Demand for this service has been established and is expected to grow over the 3 years of the project, which is funded by Macmillan until March 2019.
Delivery of the Relate Macmillan Counselling Project started in July 16 and we have now received over 70 referrals from a wide variety of sources including hospitals, information centres, GP’s and self-referrals. Counselling sessions to individuals, couples, families and young people is provided by highly trained Relate counsellors. Psycho Sexual Therapy is also part of the project.
The Independent Researcher role:
We are inviting expressions of interest from individuals, partnerships or organisations with suitable experience of evaluating similar programmes or activities. A key requirement is that researchers are able to work sensitively with service users and other stakeholders and are able to gather evidence for funding applications to establish an ongoing service beyond the 3 year life of this project. The Independent Researcher will work closely with the Macmillan Service Coordinator and will:
- Contribute to ongoing development of service evaluation
- Obtain feedback from service users
- Carry out in depth interviews with a sample of staff, partner organisations and clients
- Collate and analyse collected data
- Produce evaluation reports to include: contextual information, methodology, key recommendations, case studies and progress towards achievement of project outcomes
- Present findings to the Steering Group at appropriate milestones
Interim research and evaluation will be used to inform the development of the project and ensure that best use is made of the resources available to achieve optimum outcomes.
A value of £30,000 has been allocated to this role over the duration of the project.
It is anticipated that 700 clients will be involved in the service
The project commenced on 1st April 2016 and will completed on 31st March 2019
To submit an Expression of Interest:
If you would like to be part of this exciting project, please send your CV and a statement of interest demonstrating your/your organisations past activities in evaluating this type of activity, your key successes and 2 references (max 2 pages)
You may also submit a maximum of two evaluation reports which you have undertaken in the past which you feel supports your submission.
The deadline for submission is 12 noon on Wednesday 18th January
Expressions of Interest should be submitted electronically to:
Eileen Clews,
Relate Macmillan Coordinator
Relate Birmingham
111 Bishopsgate Street
Birmingham
B15 1ET
Telephone 0121 643 1638