We engaged Laura from Vital Insights in the spring of 2023 to undertake and initial evaluation of our funded Peer Support Network for People with Eating Difficulties and their Carers.
Before commencing, Laura was very keen to understand every aspect of the our organisation and peer network including, the purpose, the members and volunteers journeys, the processes, policies, safeguarding and expected outcomes etc. so that she had a robust overview of what she was working with. From there Laura proposed and evaluation method for the project in line with its aims. One purpose of the evaluation was to inform potential commissioners, funders and users of the service, how the peer support network can fill gaps and/or build bridges to gaining support that many people with eating difficulties and their carers need. The other key purpose was for us to learn from the first few months of operation, to evolve the peer network to ensure it was as safe and effective as possible for volunteers with lived experience of recovering from an eating difficulty themselves as well as for the members.
Laura was very methodical when conducting the evaluation, but also sensitive and alive to the issues people with eating difficulties have, as well as demonstrating a sense of understanding and patience working with a charity whose focus can be very fluid and capacity stretched. Laura was not only able to provide us with an honest and full evaluation report, but we learnt a lot from Laura in the process too.
Thanks Laura.
Laura was excellent in carrying out an evaluation of one of core services. She worked incredibly hard to overcome any obstacles and completed our evaluation on time and to a high standard. Laura quickly understood the work we do and what we needed - she brought a wealth of experience combined with creative thinking to help us achieve our goal within the resources we had available.
People she interviewed have fed back that Laura was very easy to talk to and good at helping draw out information from when they were stuck with words. She made the interview process very simple and easy making interviewees feel comfortable and therefor ensuing we got the most out of this opportunity.
We would 100% recommend Laura and we look forward to working again with her in the future!
It has been a great pleasure to work with Laura on numerous projects over more than 15 years. She’s a very highly-skilled researcher with a firm grasp of behavioural science. Her work is always sensitive, rigorous and impactful. She cuts straight to important issues and foresees both obstacles and solutions. She works well independently and with teams, communicating clearly and supportively to colleagues and stakeholders
Laura is my go-to person if I need a safe pair of hands to manage projects. She’s highly adaptable and responsive. She’ll produce clear, insightful reports and presentations. She’s also delightful to work with; warm and funny.
Laura has an impressive track record in health research, particularly when it comes to understanding user/patient needs. It’s fantastic that she’s now available as a consultant. So many organisations working with and for people with health problems will benefit from her (Vital- ) insights.
It was extremely valuable to be able to get Laura's input into my evaluation project. She spotted lots of ways to improve data collection and gave me some really helpful tips and feedback on my interviewing technique which I’ve been able to use in my subsequent work.
Laura helped me plan each stage of my project and supported me to consider the implications of various options; from considering ethical issues, recruitment and sampling strategy, and working out exactly what data to collect and how to analyse it. She gives clear, practical advice in a warm and friendly way.