SSKS blog

NES, IRISS and SSSC are hosting a series of regional engagements on reshaping care for older people.

The events offers the opportunity to incorporate many of our joint activities and shape our plans to support the workforce in the vision for RCOP that ‘Older people are valued as an asset, their voices are heard and they are supported to enjoy full and positive lives in their own home or in a homely setting’. For more information and to book your place, please visit http://t.co/NFa70HB 

IRISS has been involved in the development of a ‘Crime and justice research collection’, which contains a mixture of podcasts and videos about recent research on crime and justice related topics.

The collection contains two types of recordings. Research soundbites are short clips that highlight key findings from recent crime and justice research. Research Discussion recordings are longer pieces involving a mixture of academics, policy makers and practitioners discussing research findings and their implications for policy, practice and academia.

The collection has been designed to improve access to, and awareness of, research findings and debate. It includes a combination of videos and audio, and has been supported by the Higher Education Academy: C-SAP Network, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR), and IRISS.

Please visit the collection page on the IRISS website for further information, and to access the video and audio recordings.

Today the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) launched a series of guides about Leading for Outcomes. These provide support and training materials to help lead the social services workforce to focus on the outcomes important to people.

The guides; Leading for outcomes: a guide, Leading for outcomes: parental substance misuse, and Leading for outcomes: dementia, are freely available on the IRISS website. Each guide is aimed at team leaders, managers and trainers in social services and related areas.

The guides are designed to be adaptable and teams can use them in the way that is most appropriate for their needs and their area of practice. The guides were developed in partnership with researchers, policy-makers, managers and practitioners.

For further information on the Leading for Outcomes series, including plans for future guides, please contact Emma Collins, Evidence Informed Practice team: emma.collins@iriss.org.uk.

IRISS are pleased to announce that our website has been redesigned and was launched on Friday, 17th June. It is available at: http://www.iriss.org.uk.

The easily accessible content includes the latest news, events, multimedia resources, videos and podcasts, as well as information about us and our three programmes of work – evidence-informed practice, innovation and improvement, and knowledge media.

The site is searchable by keyword, which will return results from both our website and the Learning Exchange, IRISS’s digital library of resources.

You can also subscribe to a number of very useful RSS feeds – IRISS news, social services sector news, sector events, and podcasts. Further information and instruction about using RSS is available on this page of our website.

Please do visit and let us know what you think.

Happy viewing!

IRISS has produced a series of five booklets on the topic of innovation in social services in Scotland. They are designed to help individuals and organisations think differently and more creatively about providing services, as well as manage risk more effectively.

The titles include:

• Embracing change
• Balancing innovation and risk in social services
• How do you create the right conditions for innovation?
• Developing a framework for innovation
• Rising to the challenge: where can ideas come from?

To download the publications, visit the IRISS website.

IRISS has produced two new Insights as part of its series of reports that provide 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.

What distinguishes these two titles from the other reports is that they have been authored by individuals from SIRCC and the National Care Advisory Service (part of Catch 22), and have been completed in partnership with the Looked After Children Strategic Implementation Group.

Insight 10: Attachment-informed practice with looked after children and young people, by Judy Furnivall, SIRCC, on behalf of Scottish Attachment in Action.

Insight 11: Permanence and stability for disabled looked after children, by Dr Claire Baker, Senior Policy Manager, National Care Advisory Service.

If you have any questions or queries, or would like to order print copies, please contact: enquiries@iriss.org.uk

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Caring for Older People Portal.

What is the Care for Older People portal?

This new Knowledge Portal will be fully integrated with The Knowledge Network and Social Swervices Knowledge Scotland websites. It has been developed in consultation with social services partners, with a special focus on the knowledge needs of care home and care at home staff. The new online resource will provide access to evidence and learning resources on topics such as re-ablement, nutrition, stroke, dementia and much, much more.

The Launch

When: 30th June 2011, 1.30pm – 4.00pm

Where: The Beardmore Hotel and Conference Centre, Beardmore Street, Clydebank, Glasgow,G81 4SAWho should attend?

Anyone who has an interest in caring for older people. , click here

Book your place- http://careofolderpeople.eventbrite.com

To see the programme for the Launch click here

Anna Fowlie, CEO at the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) has recently blogged on the ‘Re-imagining’ project, explaining more about it, where they currently are with it, and what is planned for it.

The principle underlying it is that there are major challenges facing social services, which can only be met by having a confident, skilled and valued workforce, and that now is the time to have a fresh look at how things are done in Scotland.

The SSSC are welcoming views, comments and discussions around it.

The blog post is available on the SSSC website.

The Social Services Knowledge Scotland website (SSKS) has been helping social care practitioners get easy access to a wealth of evidence, information and learning resources for three years now. At the moment, SSKS does 3 key things for its users:

1. Gathers together quality information such as evidence overviews, e-learning materials and government publications
2. Gives you FREE access to subscription content such as books and journals on health and social care topics via your NHS Athens password
3. Provides access to communities of practice for social care practitioners for you to link up with like-minded individuals and share resources

 The next step for SSKS is to expand our Topics and Resources section. We are currently looking at developing new topic zones on Early Years, Older People, Learning Disabilities, Drugs & Alcohol and Criminal Justice. These zones will draw together all the useful content for staff working within each area in one easy-to-access portal.

More information about these zones will follow soon, but first up is the Early Years zone. If you work with under 5s and would like to have your say about what resources would be most useful here, please complete our questionnaire here https://www.research.net/s/EarlyYears2011

Your views will help us shape the content of the new Early Years zone, so please tell us what you think.

IRISS is pleased to announce the release of three new IRISS Insights, a collection of reports providing the social services workforce with brief, accessible and practice-oriented summaries of published evidence on key topics.

• Insight 7: improving support for black and minority ethnic (BME) carers
• Insight 8: supporting unpaid carers: the benefits of telecare
• Insight 9: intensive supervision, surveillance and monitoring of young people

To request free print copies of any of our Insights series or to suggest topics, please contact us: enquiries@iriss.org.uk /  0141 559 5059