The Public Advisory Group (PAG) is a group of people with lived experience of social care; some have experience of receiving social care or being in local authority care as children/young people, some have experience of receiving social care as adults and some have experience of engaging with social care as parent and/or carers. Many have multiple areas of lived experience.
People from the PAG are directly involved in each evaluation carried out by SOCRATES. PAG members have also been involved in creating and delivering co-production training for SOCRATES researchers, the development of the SOCRATES logo and branding, and supporting researchers to prepare for co-production activities.
The purpose of the PAG is to provide a lived experience hub for SOCRATES. This is a place researchers can come to when they want to consult people with lived experience, it is a place where people with lived experience can share reflections with each other and a space from which ideas and agendas based on lived experience can emerge.
Not all members are listed here, but these are some of the public group who work on SOCRATES:
- Arif Hoque
- Bradley George Wilson
- Chris Sims
- Debs Smith
- Keiron Harris
- Saffron Mae Baldoza
- Samina Begum
- Sarah Markham
- Seema Desai
- Suzanne
- Wesley Dowridge
"Hi, my name is Chris! I personally got involved in the SOCRATES project as I am someone who has lived experience of services with varied outcomes. I am someone who has always been eager to want to help others and SOCRATES really felt like a journey that would allow me to accomplish this value of mine. SOCRATES has been amazing so far and it has been lovely to get to know what is being done to improve research within the field." - Chris Sims
"I wanted to be involved with SOCRATES because I wanted the chance to use my lived experience and help make research better. I've found being part of it really rewarding, and have found the more I've put in, the more I've got out of it, as cheesy as that sounds. The more of my lived experience and insight I have shared, the more I've seen it reflected.’"- Saffron Mae Baldoza