News

Over 2013-15, the Scottish Government provided time-limited funding to 16 projects across Scotland to establish new and develop existing community services for women who offend. A national evaluation examined how these services were implemented and to what extent they contributed towards positive outcomes for women (associated with reduced reoffending). This national evaluation was completed at the end of May 2015. It was undertaken by Ruth Dryden and Colleen Souness, former Associates at Iriss

The relationships between decision makers, citizens and communities are currently being redefined in Scotland. We are in the grip of an exciting debate about social justice, values and community empowerment.

Against this backdrop, 'asset-based' and 'place-based' approaches signal a new way of doing things that are focused on collaborative and mutually beneficial engagement with people and communities. This aspiration is great, but the practice is challenging.

Between June 2014 and April 2015, Iriss led a project to explore the perceptions of, and approaches to, innovation in homelessness prevention in Scotland. Through engagement with a variety of partners including local authorities, third sector, health and Scottish Government, the project captured key messages from a collection of approaches which help support people affected by homelessness.

Iriss's Leading Change in Supervision project aimed to explore the topic of supervision with six partners from across social services, and to highlight the challenges and enablers for changing supervision.

The final report and case studies, as well as an Iriss Insight - Achieving effective supervision - have been published.

Yesterday (May 26th) I organised my last event for Iriss. It focused on Achieving A Better Life for People Living with Dementia and was based in part on the DEEP project (Developing Evidence-enriched Practice) funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Case studies from this project (one from North Lanarkshire, one from Gwalia in Wales) were supplemented by inputs from Emma Miller on personal outcomes, from Ann Pascoe on three key dementia challenges, and from our own Keeping it Personal project.

Pilotlight set out to lead thinking on co-designing self-directed support for people across Scotland.

Pilotlight has co-designed four pathways to self-directed support focusing on mental health, risk, self-employment and young people in transition. The co-design teams for each pathway have included people who access support, local authorities and support providers. The project has tested and refined a model for successful power sharing, produced tools and resources, and developed solutions for the implementation of self-directed support.

Over 2014-'15 the Innovation and Improvement programme ran a project called Relationships Matter which:

Are demands on the social services workforce greater now than they have ever been? What are the views of practitioners about their work?

The current climate poses both challenges and opportunities. We want to better understand these challenges by finding out more from people working at all kinds of levels and in all kinds of roles about the real experience of delivering care and support.

Iriss wants to better understand practitioners' experiences of delivering care and support in Scotland and part of The View from Here project will be to undertake a survey in partnership with the Guardian to reach a broad audience across Scotland. This survey will be available later in April.

The 2nd Annual UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum is being held on 13th-14th April 2015 at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. It will provide a space for knowledge producers, knowledge brokers and knowledge users to come together to learn from each other, sharing good (and bad) practice about improving what they do and help maximise the impact of all types of knowledge in practice.

Alison Petch will give a plenary talk about Iriss, exploring ways in which its approach has evolved and how this may or may not relate to theories of knowledge mobilisation.