Evidence-Informed Practice

Tilda Goldberg was a pioneering social work researcher. She was the Director of Research at the National Institute for Social Work and carried out the first Randomised Controlled Trials in British social work in the 1960s and 1970s. The Goldberg Centre was set-up with core funding from Tilda Goldberg’s bequest to address this problem by developing excellent social care research and supporting the use of evidence-based approaches in practice.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has established a new School for Social Care Research. The aim of the school is to increase the evidence-base for adult social care practice. The SSCR will undertake high-quality primary research and provide a focus for applied research in social care within the NIHR.

The Research Unit for Research Utilisation's (RURU) role is to conduct research on research use and provide a research resource for all those interested in using research to improve public policy and services. In addition to its research activities, RURU also provides training in areas relating to the use of research in policy and practice.

The Personal Social Services Research Unit’s (PSSRU) mission is to conduct high-quality research on social and health care to inform and influence policy, practice and theory.

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) has three programmes through which it delivers its work: evidence-informed practice, innovation and improvement, and knowledge media. This is a research paper, which examines attitudes, approaches, use and barriers to innovation and improvement and evidence-informed practice in the sector, which could be used as a baseline for future research to track and monitor attitudinal change.

Fergus McNeill discusses a literature review of the management of change within community justice organisations, conducted with Ros Burnett and Tricia McCulloch. The review explored: the nature and character of occupational, professional and organisational cultures in community justice; how such cultures respond to, accommodate and resist change processes; how and why processes of change succeed and fail in criminal justice organisations; and effective approaches to the management of change in criminal justice.

Paper that examines public attitudes towards housing tenure; public attitudes towards neighbourhood and property types; perceptions of housing taxation; and the implications of the evidence for reforming the housing system to support vulnerable households. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) commissioned the paper to contribute ideas for its Housing Market Taskforce, a two-year programme of work aiming to achieve long-term stability in the housing market for vulnerable households.

In 2001, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation embarked upon a unique and challenging programme of research that explored the problem of illicit drugs in the UK. The research addressed many questions that were often too sensitive for the government to tackle. In many cases, these studies represented the first research on these issues and the policy implications have been far-reaching. This report outlines the results of the largest independent programme of drugs research of its kind within the UK.

Social Care TV is a new online channel for anyone involved in the social care sector, ranging from managers and trainers to front-line staff and people who use care services. As part of the SCIE family of resources, Social Care TV brings to life the work and lives of people involved in all aspects of the social care sector, through a series of short films and links to multimedia and e-learning resources. This site offers access to video-based training resources and general interest programmes, reflecting the issues, challenges and rewards in current social care practice.

Multimedia e-learning resources that cover a range of topics, with each topic containing a number of modules. Each module provides audio, video and interactive technology to assist in exploring the topic area.