Reports

In 2004, a new multidisciplinary children's services inspection team based in Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) started to undertake inspections of child protection services in all 32 local authorities in Scotland. The authorities were inspected against 18 quality indicators on a six point scale ranging from Level 6, 'Excellent: Outstanding or Sector Leading', to Level 1, 'Major Weaknesses'.

A report for Iriss by Focused on Learning Ltd.

"The challenge for all councils now is to move social media off their list of challenges and on to their list of opportunities. If they don't, they face moving into a changing world under equipped and under-resourced. If they do though, they may find that the solutions they seek are right under their nose"

Scotland is facing an ageing population demographic and the implications have been widely discussed: the size of the available workforce; pressure on pensions; and how health and social care will support more individuals with emerging long term conditions. These implications coupled with a desire for public services to be more flexible and personalised to individuals, has led some local authorities to fundamentally redesign their approach to service delivery.

The Iriss has three programmes through which it delivers its work: evidence-informed practice, innovation and improvement, and knowledge media. Iriss wished to conduct research to examine 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. The objectives of the research were to:

This document offers guidance to help social service organisations develop systems and processes to ensure good research governance and shared ethical principles for conducting social services research in Scotland.

This evaluation explores the practitioner research initiative of Children 1st and the Glasgow School of Social Work which was aimed at supporting practitioners to develop and undertake their own small-scale research projects. The project sought to have an impact at three levels: individual, team, and organisation. The findings discuss the consequences, benefits and outcomes at all of these three levels.

Summary of a literature review undertaken to establish the context for practitioner research and its impact on practice through identifying practitioner research carried out in a social services context. The review formed part of an evaluation into the initiative taken by Children 1st and the Glasgow School of Social Work to develop a practitioner research programme. The evaluation was commissioned by Iriss with funding from the Scottish Government's Changing Lives Fund.

This report describes the development of Key Capabilities in Child Care and Protection, which set out the knowledge and skills an emerging social worker should have in relation to children and their needs by the point of qualifying. The report looks at the two phases of the project:

A project investigating the Alignment of the Standards in Social Work Education (SiSWE) to the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF). This project shines a spotlight on the social work qualifying degrees in Scotland with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the SiSWE and the SCQF.