A skilled and valued workforce is at the heart of Social Services Vision and Strategy for Scotland.
Our vision is a socially just Scotland with excellent social services delivered by a skilled and valued workforce which works with others to empower, support and protect people, with a focus on prevention, early intervention and enablement.
It is, therefore, crucial that we hear from this workforce in order to understand their experiences. Over 2015/16, Iriss carried out work to gain a richer perspective of these experiences. It resulted in The View from Here, a project which brought together quantitative and qualitative (including illustrated stories) research on the experiences of the social services workforce in Scotland. The findings were launched in October 2015.
Early 2016, Scottish Care launched its findings from the Frontline Voices project, which heard the views of frontline care staff which were published in a report. In it, men and women gave an insight into what inspires them to enter and remain in the profession and also offers their views on areas that give them cause for concern.
Iriss worked with Scottish Care to produce an animated video presentation for the launch. A creative script was put together by Katharine Ross from Scottish Care, we audio recorded the ‘voices’ of social care practitioners and Paul Hart, Iriss’ interactive developer produced a creative, visual way to communicate these voices. This involved dropping the audio into a software package called Adobe After Affects and and adding a few filters and effects on the audio to bring them to life as simple animated waveforms. The final pieces were assembled in Adobe Premiere.
Here’s the finished video animation:
Katharine Ross, National Workforce Development Lead at Scottish Care commented,
Scottish Care worked in partnership with Iriss to create a presentation for the launch of the ‘Voices from the Front Line’ report in February 2016. Their support was simply invaluable. Iriss – in particular Michelle Drumm and Paul Hart – were so generous with their time. Their expert knowledge and creative input (from supporting the recording of the voices, editing material to developing a 7 minute video) ensured that a quality, multi purpose resource was developed. We look forward to working with Iriss throughout 2016!’
Over 2016/17, we’ll be building on The View from Here, aiming to showcase the existing stories and curate new stories through a touring a multimedia exhibition. Frontline Voices will be incorporated into this exhibition. The plan is to launch the exhibition at the Social Work Scotland conference on 15 and 16 June 2016.
Throughout the year we’ll work with partners to promote public understanding about caring professions and the contribution of people who work in care, in line with the Promoting Public Understanding strand of the vision and strategy.