Matter is an online community for young adult carers which has been created by Carers Trust. The Carers Trust works to improve support, services and recognition for anyone living with the challenges of caring, unpaid, for a family member or friend who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or addiction problems. With its Network Partners, it aims to ensure that information, advice and practical support are available to all carers across the UK.

Our Innovation and Improvement team is leading a 20-month project to redesign the pathway from hospital to home for older people across Scotland. We're working with health and social care practitioners, older people, their families and informal carers to identify issues and improve care pathways from hospital to home and enable a more positive experience for all.

The first outputs of the project, the hopital to home pathway map, is now available online at: Hospital to Home.

Pearltrees is a creative and visual way to save and manage your favourite websites or 'pearls' as they are known. 'Pearls' - websites, files, photos and notes - can be saved and organised into what's known as 'pearltrees'. These 'trees' can be created and organised around subjects of interest. For example, you may have an interest in photography and want to save lots of interesting websites, blogs, photos on the topic. Using Pearltrees it's simple.

The Care Inspectorate, the independent scrutiny and improvement body for care services in Scotland, has launched The Hub, a website that provides access to resources aimed at supporting improvement in social services and social care through the use and sharing of intelligence and research-led practice. A fully accessible website, the content is provided in three categories: knowledge, innovation and improvement.

On Tuesday 18 March, social services organisations from the public, voluntary and independent sectors, as well as individuals that use services in Scotland, came together to celebrate World Social Work Day at the second Social Services Expo 2014, which was held at Edinburgh International Conference Centre. The event highlighted the range of social services and supports available across Scotland and showcased some of the good work that is happening.

Pilotlight is working with teams of people who access and deliver support to design pathways to self-directed support. The co-design team in Moray identified a need for an accessible introduction to self-directed support. They wanted it to be inviting, fun and easy to understand, and so came up with the idea of 'Pick 'n' Mix - helping you pick 'n' mix the care and support services to live the life you choose'.

If you often need to collect feedback on an event, create a noticeboard, take notes, brainstorm ideas or make lists, then take a look at Padlet. It enables the creation of a 'wall' or web space where you can post text, photos and videos, and then invite others - colleagues, clients, friends - to do the same, working collaboratively to create content. And it's really easy to get started and use - you don't even have to create an account!

The Scottish Government has issued guidance: Navigating ethical approval and access in social care research (PDF). This has been developed by a working group involving Scottish Government, ADSW and Iriss, and explores the routes for navigating social care research ethics.

Iriss's new flagship project Plan P: New approaches to prevention with older people will be running over the next 2.5 years and will focus on tackling the key issue of loneliness and isolation in older people.

We will look at the current evidence in this area and what this means for practice in health and social care, as well as produce case studies documenting effective current support and interventions.

Robert McKee, a screenwriter and lecturer, is quoted as saying 'Stories are how we remember, we tend to forget lists and bullet points'. We all at some time have been subjected to busy and / or illegible Powerpoint slides at events, without really taking any learning away from them. Stories are different. It can be argued that the art of telling and listening to stories is at the heart of what it means to be human, how we articulate our experiences of the world and and make sense of it.