Reflections from Conversations with Community Panel Members

Uncategorized Thursday 23 April 2026

The YPIP project seeks to enable the sharing of knowledge, insight and experience through equitable partnership and working in order to shape policy making around local challenges. A key component of YPIP is the community panel, a group of 20 individuals recruited from a range of disadvantaged or underrepresented communities.

Since its inception, the panel has met regularly to explore through discussion and practice what inclusive and respectful collaboration looks like, and how communities can be engaged and enabled to positively, equitably and effectively influence research and policy making.

Panel members also participate in YPIP’s work packages, working with academics and other stakeholders to develop innovative solutions to specific topics and challenges. Prior to the writing of this report, five nominated members represented the panel at YPIP’s Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund (CIYF), where they reviewed and decided on funding allocation to voluntary and community sector-led research projects via a competitive application procedure.

This report forms part of YPIP’s attempts to embed equity and award communities a meaningful voice. It draws on interviews undertaken during the latter half of 2025 reflecting on the panel’s first 10 months. It shares key insights from this initial period of panel operation around experiences of the process and membership, including personal reflections. Crucially this report reflects a snapshot in time half-way through the community panel journey. It forms only part of a complex jigsaw of evidence and reflection accompanied by other public reports available later in the YPIP journey.

Eleven members of the panel took part in interviews and focus groups to share their views on being involved in the panel and the approaches to coproduction within the panel itself, with the YPIP work packages, and for the Communities Innovating Yorkshire (CIY) Fund.

Read the full report here