PEPE 23 Jan 2008

Making a framework for

good practice in social care

Patricia Kearney, SCIE

Karen Jones, University of the West of England

Mike Fisher, SCIE

Agenda

SCIE’s task in defining good practice Working with practitioners to define good

practice Is good practice evidence-based practice? Your views?

About SCIE

Launched in 2001 by Government, SCIE develops and promotes knowledge about good practice in social care

Works in partnership Products and services are free Draws on and analyses knowledge from a

range of sources

Sources of knowledge

A KNOWLEDGE

BASE FOR SOCIAL CARE

Policy

Organisational knowledge

User knowledge

Practitioner knowledge

Research

What we have learned…

Dissemination has to lead to implementation and evaluation

SCIE is small and has no remit within service organisations

Our impact is greatest where we meet fertile ground

The sector’s knowledge management capacity is low

Status of Social Care

Government has asked SCIE to lead the sector on developing the status of social care, including the answer to ‘what is good practice?’

An opportunity to increase and sustain the sector’s KM capacity

Good practice framework for use by the sector Developed by SCIE through consensus

building and testing within and across some key organisations

We want the project to…

Develop consensus across the sector about good practice

Use examples from key stake-holder’s practice to illustrate the framework and show how organisations with different remits will use it

Have practice experience, and its description, as central

Critical Best Practice: key themes

Getting away from a ‘deficit culture’ (Ferguson, 2003) in social work

Profiling best practice through stakeholder narratives

Application of critical analysis to good practice

Working together to create practice narratives

Academics and practitioners working together Key principles:

- avoiding deficit talk and seeking out ‘best’

- using detailed narratives of practice

- focus on process

- application of critical sociological analysis

Drawing out ‘best’

The challenge of articulating ‘best’

The challenge of articulating underpinning knowledge

The value of a deductive approach

Some final thoughts on ‘best’ (1)

Critical best practice refers to social work which is skilfully supportive, therapeutic and challenging of power structures, yet authoritative and which can be shown to deserve to be called the ‘best’ because it contains aspects of all these.

(Jones et al, 2008)

Some final thoughts on ‘best’ (2)

Embraces complexity and ethical dilemmas

Importance of opportunities to articulate good practice and practice knowledge

Importance of stakeholder ‘voice’

Is good practice EBP?

practice that is effective in achieving the services stakeholders want, at a price they are willing to afford economic evaluation?

processes that are accessible and acceptable to users, and feasible in daily practice

outcomes that stakeholders want

EBP definition: example

An absence of evidence

investment in social care research is low many areas lack outcomes-based evidence research runs 2+ years behind practice publication lead times are often 18 months

Innovation-based evidence?

can we derive evidence more urgently from practice innovation? ‘new’ in social care, new to the locality, requiring

new arrangements

criteria processes outcomes rationale feasibility

Innovation Based Evidence (IBE)

descriptive scale using all four criteria (process, outcomes, rationale, feasibility)

taking account of reporting success rather than failure local versus national partial evidence (missing dimensions) biased evidence (e.g champions, baselines) short- versus long-term, durable outcomes

Summary

SCIE’s task in defining good practice Working with practitioners to define good

practice Is good practice evidence-based practice? Your views?