News

We would like to express our sincere thanks to Jim Elder-Woodward, OBE who has now completed his term of office on the Iriss Board.

Jim has had life-long experience of disability, not only as a health and social service user, but as a service provider, planner and researcher. He is Chair of the Scottish Government’s Independent Living in Scotland Project and Co-Chair of its Independent Living Partnership Board. 

His contribution has been invaluable and we wish him all the very best in the future. 

You are invited to provide a workshop contribution to a national conference to share and promote best practice in service user and carer involvement in professional education.

The conference will be held on 26 April 2017 at the University of Stirling and bring together service users and carers, students, educators, professionals and policy-makers. It will be relevant to social work, health, education and other areas of professional education, at qualifying and post-qualifying levels.

Workshops should:

The Scottish Social Services Awards are now open for nominations and we encourage you to enter!

Including 10 new categories such as ‘silo buster’, ‘the untold story’ and ‘head above the parapet’, the awards have been designed to recognise innovation and excellent practice across the sector.

The Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser at Scottish Government is seeking contributions from the social services workforce to a survey on how they access information and knowledge online.

The plan is to understand:

It’s Co-production Week (14-20 November)  in Scotland!

At Iriss we believe in active citizenship and involving people who access care and support in a meaningful way - a way that means people have the right to participate in and access information relating to the decision-making processes that affect their lives and well-being. These values underpin effective co-production and are reflected in a lot of our work. 

Examples of our work include:

David Wiseman has completed his term of office on the Iriss Board.

David brought experience from his previous roles as Head of Older People’s Services, South Lanarkshire Council, Director of Strategic Services and Depute Chief Executive of the Care Commission.

We would like to thank him for his outstanding contribution to supporting Iriss over the years. It's much appreciated and we wish him all the best in the future.

We're looking to capture and showcase inspirational examples from across the social services sector in Scotland on how the translation of evidence into action is being effectively supported within organisations. This could include structures, processes or supports (such as resources, roles or initiatives) that are in place to implement change using this evidence, and the impact that this has generated.

This week, at her party conference, First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon accepted the Who Cares? Scotland's pledge to listen to 1,000 care experienced young people over the next two years. We were really pleased to hear this  - our Relationships Matter work has been around supporting continuing relationships for young people leaving care, which we believe is really important.