Despite the many benefits of club-organized sports participation for children, sports participation is lower among children from low-income families than among those from middle- or high-income families. Social safety experienced by parents from low-income families is an important facilitator for parents to request financial support for their children’s sports participation. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to better understand parental social (un)safety in the context of acquiring financial support for children’s sports participation and how to create a safe social environment for low-income parents to request and receive this financial support. The second aim was to describe the co-creation process, which was organized to contribute to social safety solutions. To reach these goals, we applied a participatory action research method in the form of four co-creation sessions with professionals and an expert-by-experience, as well as a group interview with parents from low-income families. The data analysis included a thematic analysis of the qualitative data. The results showed that from the perspective of parents, social safety encompassed various aspects such as understandable information, procedures based on trust, and efficient referral processes. Sport clubs were identified as the primary source of information for parents. Regarding the co-creation process, the study found that stakeholders tended to overestimate parental social safety levels. Although the stakeholders enjoyed and learned from the sessions, differences in prior knowledge and a lack of a shared perspective on the purpose of the sessions made it challenging to collaboratively create solutions. The study’s recommendations include strategies for increasing parental social safety and facilitating more effective co-creation processes. The findings of this study can be used to inform the development of interventions that contribute to a social environment in which parents from low-income families feel safe to request and receive financial support for their children’s sports participation.
Introduction: The implementation of oncology care pathways that standardize organizational procedures has improved cancer care in recent years. However, the involvement of “authentic” patients and caregivers in quality improvement of these predetermined pathways is in its infancy, especially the scholarly reflection on this process. We, therefore, aim to explore the multidisciplinary challenges both in practice, when cancer patients, their caregivers, and a multidisciplinary team of professionals work together on quality improvement, as well as in our research team, in which a social scientist, health care professionals, health care researchers, and experience experts design a research project together. Methods and design: Experience-based co-design will be used to involve cancer patients and their caregivers in a qualitative research design. In-depth open discovery interviews with 12 colorectal cancer patients, 12 breast cancer patients, and seven patients with cancer-associated thrombosis and their caregivers, and focus group discussions with professionals from various disciplines will be conducted. During the subsequent prioritization events and various co-design quality improvement meetings, observational field notes will be made on the multidisciplinary challenges these participants face in the process of co-design, and evaluation interviews will be done afterwards. Similar data will be collected during the monthly meetings of our multidisciplinary research team. The data will be analyzed according to the constant comparative method. Discussion: This study may facilitate quality improvement programs in oncologic care pathways, by increasing our real-world knowledge about the challenges of involving “experience experts” together with a team of multidisciplinary professionals in the implementation process of quality improvement. Such co-creation might be challenging due to the traditional paternalistic relationship, actual disease-/treatment-related constraints, and a lack of shared language and culture between patients, caregivers, and professionals and between professionals from various disciplines. These challenges have to be met in order to establish equality, respect, team spirit, and eventual meaningful participation.
Municipalities increasingly seek to include citizens in decision-making processes regarding local issues, such as urban planning. This paper presents a case study on using Virtual Reality (VR) in a process of civic participation in the redesign of a public park. The municipality included citizens in intensive co-design activities to create three designs for the park and engaged the neighbourhood community in co-decision, in the form of a ballot. Through the civic participatory process, we studied the effectiveness of using VR technology to engage the community in participating in the co-decision process. The three designs were presented using highly realistic 360˚ visualisations and the effects on engagement were compared between various devices: VR headsets, smartphones, tablets, and computers. Viewing the designs in 2D paper plans was also included in the comparison. The study included over 1300 respondents that participated in the ballot. A statistical analysis of the collected data shows that participants viewing the 360˚ rendered images with VR technology expressed a significantly higher engagement in the co-decision process than those using their computer at home or viewing 2D paper plans. The paper describes the complete participatory design process and the impact of the e-governance used on the target group as well as on the actors organizing the e-governance process. We discuss how the use of new technology and active presence of a voting-support team inspired citizens to participate in the co-creation process and how the investment in this procedure helped the local authorities to generate support for the plans and strengthen its relationship with the community. The use of realistic visualisations that can be easily assessed by citizens through user-friendly technology, enabled a large and diverse audience to participate. This resulted in greater visibility of municipal efforts to enhance the living environment of citizens and is therefore an important step in increased civic engagement in municipal policy-making and implementation.
