SSKS blog

Read a report on the SSKS launch by David Friel from the Improvement Service here

The JSWEC planning group has announced that its one-day conference, entitled Social work under pressure: solutions, sustainability and social justice, will be held on Thursday 14th July 2011, at the University of Manchester.

It will include presentations of recent work undertaken in both education and research, as well as provide the opportunity for the sharing of ideas and experiences of current issues, including social work reforms through plenary sessions.

The planning group is currently calling for Expressions of Interest, which are invited from:

• Social work educators in HEIs, including service user educators
• Social work educators in practice settings
• Social work practitioners
• Practice learning providers
• Social work academic researchers
• Social work practice researchers
• Doctoral students
• Social work learners / students
• Social work policy makers
• Educators, researchers and policy makers engaged in interprofessional learning from cognate disciplines

In recognition of the fact that this year’s conference is a one-day event, a smaller number of presentations will take place than previously. For this reason, the process for submitting abstracts has been adapted, including some additional criteria for acceptance.Work presented at the conference needs to meet the following criteria:

• It represents research and/or educational developments that have taken place within the last year
• It relates directly to the theme of social work under pressure

It is unlikely that multiple papers will be accepted from a single institution, so people are advised to liaise with colleagues within their institution and consider submitting a joint proposal.

Expressions of Interest (maximum 250 words) must be submitted no later than 4pm on Thursday 17th February 2011 to Helen Carmichael (formerly Helen Bulpitt) at helen.carmichael@soton.ac.uk, with the phrase ‘expression of interest’ in the subject line. All of the following headings must be used in submissions:

• Name
• Institution/organisation
• Contact details
• Brief description of work to be presented
• Date work to be presented was undertaken
• How your proposal meets the theme
• Workshop or paper preferred

General enquiries should be directed to John Williams at j.m.williams@soton.ac.uk.

Due to high demand, we have now released more places for the SSKS Launch on January 25th in Pollok Halls, Edinburgh.

This event is your opportunity to find out about all the benefits of SSKS and embedding knowledge in practice across the social services sector.

Don’t miss out, register for your place at http://sskslaunch.eventbrite.com/

We hope to see you there!

IRISS are pleased to release three new IRISS Insights, a series of reports providing the social services workforce with brief, accessible and practice-oriented summaries of published evidence on key topics. Developed through a process of rapid appraisal, Insights seek to highlight the practice implications of research evidence and answer the ‘So what does this mean in practice?’ question for each topic reviewed. The summaries are intended to support decision making and to be of benefit to practitioners and policy makers alike.

The summaries entitled, Supporting those with dementia: reminiscence therapy and life story work; Transition to adulthood for young people with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD); and Life after stroke: the long-term emotional and psychological needs of stroke survivors and their carers, are available in the Insights collection at: http://lx.iriss.org.uk/collections/IRISS%20Insights

For further information on the Insights series, please contact Ellen Daly (ellen.daly@iriss.org.uk). To order print copies, please contact Sharon Dennett (sharon.dennett@iriss.org.uk).