social care professionals

Cross-government website for drug professionals and anyone interested in the national drug strategy.

In December 2002, the Government launched the Updated Drug Strategy 2002. This built upon, and adapted the Government's Drug Strategy Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain, launched in 1998. Aiming to reduce the harm that drugs cause to society - communities, individuals and their families - the Drug Strategy has four main elements: young people, reducing supply, communities, treatment.

Document that presents the government’s response to the consultation held during spring 2008 on the new registration framework to be introduced from 2010.

The main purpose of the registration framework is independent assurance of the safety and quality of care. All providers of regulated activities will need to register with the new Care Quality Commission and meet the same essential standards, whether they are public, private or third sector.

Good communication, both oral and written, is at the heart of best practice in social work. Communication skills are essential for establishing effective and respectful relationships with service users, and are also essential for assessments, decision making and joint working with colleagues and other professionals.

This research project, commissioned by the Scottish Government, looks at how advocacy for children in the Children's Hearings System compares with arrangements in other UK systems of child welfare and youth justice and those internationally, and what children and young people and the professionals who work with them think about advocacy arrangements in the Children's Hearings System and how these can be improved.

There is a growing realisation that service uses and carers should be involved in developing the services they receive. Their expertise as users of services and what they want from services should be heard. It is particularly important that service users are involved in the national organisations that regulate services, the workforce, education and training n social care.

Evidence-based policy and practice increasingly demands the use of research as a key tool to improve practice. However, little research can be directly applied to practice, many practitioners aren't equipped to digest research and appropriate support systems are lacking. What is needed is a better understanding of the relationship between social care research and the work of social care practitioners, including what organisational structures are needed to enable the use of research.

SCIE, in the formation of its good practice guidance for the social care sector seeks to include all relevant kinds of knowledge and strongly believes that it is only through looking at the sector from a whole perspective - including the views of service users and practitioners - that we can truly advise social care workers on what works best.