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Farewell to Fizz

At the end of September 2025, our Public Involvement and Community Engagement (PICE) Manager, Dr Felicity (Fizz) Shenton will leave the ARC NENC to take retirement.

Fizz joined us in 2020, and has expertly led our Public Involvement and Community Engagement work for over five years.

In this blog, she reflects on her role with the ARC NENC, the things that have been achieved, and the connections that have been made during this time.

I became the ARC NENC Public Involvement and Community Engagement (PICE) Manager at the beginning of May 2020 at the height of the first Covid lockdown when we were all exploring the unchartered territory of online meetings. How on earth to manage an involvement and engagement role without being able to meet people, chat, visit them in their own places and spaces and all, starting from scratch in a new ARC?

Over the past five and a half years since that uncertain start, I have worked in partnership with many, many fantastic people (service users, researchers, practitioners, clinicians) and organisations (local authorities, NHS, universities) and brilliant voluntary and community sector organisations throughout the whole region.

My first priorities were to create a network of service users, patients, carers, public members, people with lived experience and community organisations. This over time developed as the PAN (Public Advisory Network) which is now a thriving and diverse network of almost 100 people and organisations, and a Young People’s Network now a diverse and inclusive YPAN of around 20 young people aged 10 – 23. Together we co-produced the PICE (Public Involvement & Community Engagement) Strategy required by NIHR, an Induction Pack for new members  and a resource to guide researchers who wish to work with young people.

Creating connections across the region

I joined the regional Creating Connections Network, a partnership between the PICE leads across the NIHR regional research infrastructure. These were fantastic likeminded, experienced public involvement professionals who were inclusive, collaborative and happy to share. My wonderful colleague Dr Angela Wearn started work as the ARC PICE Research Fellow later that summer and together we developed an online introductory workshop and shared tools and resources to support the work, develop reciprocal sustainable partnerships with people and organisations across the region and to provide advice and support to researchers about all things PICE.

Developing new communities of interest

Over the years we created a NENC Peer Research Community of Practice with colleagues from Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health, and the fabulous Professor Peter Van der Graaf who joined me in co-ordinating a series of online and in-person events and resources.

We also set up a PICE group of care home residents with staff and residents from a brilliant research ready care home, The White House in Stockton.

Members of the PAN and YPAN supported the ARC Open Funding Competitions in 2020 and 2021 reviewing over 150 research applications each year and sharing in the decision making about which research would be funded.

The ARC NENC led on two of the NIHR ARCs national priority research consortia; ‘Health and Care Inequalities’ and ‘Prevention Including Behavioural Risk Factors’  – and supported PICE Groups throughout the lifetime of these national programmes of work, delivering national events in York and London.

We also developed a diverse and inclusive Palliative and End of Life Care PPI Group as part of the regional RIPEN Network and supported the development of a regional Deaf Wellbeing Network with colleagues from CNTW and Deaf Empowering Network.

In 2022 the ARC NENC became the first ARC to sign up to the Health Research Authority Shared Commitment to Public Involvement a national campaign to raise the profile and standards of public involvement in research.

Championing equity in public involvement

In response to ongoing challenges around payments for public involvement, we created a Regional Remuneration Working Group involving researchers, PICE practitioners, public partners and finance leads from each of the six universities in the region.

With active support from the national leads in the NIHR Centre for Engagement and Dissemination, we attempted to create a streamlined regional approach to payments and held a learning event in November 2024 to share the work we had done.

We also developed practice guidance on working with interpreters and translators co-produced with regional interpreting professionals, and in 2024 we launched guidance on ethical practice in PPI in research which had been co-produced with public partners, VCSE organisations and researchers.

The highlights

I have spent many hours travelling across to West Cumbria, down to Teesside and across this very large geographical region meeting people and communities, delivering events and sharing learning, all co-produced and in partnership with great people and diverse communities.

• In 2021, with colleagues from Investing in Children (a regional children’s human rights organisation) we pioneered a new award to demonstrate the impact of PICE in research based solely on reflections from public contributors. This was called The Dialogue and Change Award and this innovative and creative approach ensured that public contributors could see what a difference they were making to research.
• In January 2023 the first of our monthly PICE Special Interest Group meetings took place online. The SIG includes service users, people with lived experience, researchers, practitioners and anyone with an interest in PICE in health and social care. Each month there is a presentation on a topic of interest followed by an informal Q&A session. Topics have included: ethical issues, research with learning disabled adults, peer researchers, imposter participants, and creative approaches.
• In the summer of 2021, work began to develop an African Family Research Group. The work started with the community – meeting women’s groups, a young people’s group, faith leaders, and a men’s group – to discuss their interests and research ideas. This resulted in a series of workshops on topics that the community had identified. These included workshops on: neurodiversity – delivered by autistic researchers and a VCSE organisation that deliver services for autistic and neurodiverse children; menopause delivered by a researcher who had completed work with women in Uganda exploring menopause; CPR delivered by the North East Ambulance Service; and death and dying delivered by colleagues from St Oswald’s Hospice. By engaging with community members on the issues that they had raised and were priorities for them, we have now created a group of people with an interest in research. Members of this African community have now engaged in research groups around Palliative and End of Life Care, prevention of allergies in babies, working with people who have survived a stroke, and prostate cancer. Two of the young people are also active members of the ARC YPAN group. By turning the approach on its head and starting with the concerns and interests of the community rather than approaching a community with issues identified by researchers, we have created an inclusive, reciprocal research partnership which demonstrates real engagement.
• In July 2022 we successfully recruited a VCSE Research Partnership Coordinator, hosted by VONNE, as part of an initial 2-year pilot, which has been successfully re-funded in 2025 for a further 2 years. This post is jointly-funded by NIHR Research infrastructure partners across the region and is an innovative and ground-breaking approach to facilitating research partnerships between VCSE organisations, marginalised communities, and researchers. An additional piece of work to co-produce community engagement resources will be launched in the autumn of 2025 with the fabulous team from VONNE.
• In September 2024 we were successful in securing an NIHR Programme Development Grant to develop a NENC Children and Young People’s Research Partnership. This work has been co-produced from the outset with young people and with VCSE young people’s projects.

It has been busy, and I am so proud of what we have achieved together. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the ARC NENC and worked with so may great people, fully supported by a Senior Leadership Team that understands the importance of research underpinned by transformational public involvement and community engagement.

This has honestly been the very best job I have had in over 40 years of working in the public sector. I wish the ARC NENC continued success and would like to thank each and every person I have had contact with since May 2020.

If you are keen to get involved as a public contributor to research, or would like to find out more about the work or the groups mentioned in this blog, you can contact the ARC NENC team by email at [email protected]