SCIE’s regional and international work

England

In the future SCIE will have a more regional focus for the dissemination of our work as we believe that this will be the most effective means of reaching our audience.

The Department of Health is establishing a presence in each of the English regions, including the appointment of nine Deputy Directors of Social Care (DDSC) who are jointly accountable to the Director of Social Care Leadership and Performance and Regional Directors of Public Health. SCIE will access and work with these new posts and with the regional Joint Improvement Partnerships (JIPs).

Wales and Northern Ireland

The policy context and organisation of services are increasingly different in Northern Ireland (The Reform of Public Administration) and Wales (Fulfilled lives, supportive communities).

Measures to improve the social care research infrastructure and develop the workforce (through a workforce action plan) will underpin this. SCIE’s work will take account of this and support service improvement in Wales and Northern Ireland as defined by our sponsors in those countries.

SCIE’s international work

SCIE’s work is of interest to social care researchers and practitioners from around the world. For example, we work closely with the Campbell Collaboration, the international body that maintains standards in systematic reviewing.

We also have a number of projects with international partners.

PROLIX (Process-orientated Learning and Information exchange)

The aim of this project is that if learning can be more closely related to improving business processes the result will be improved business performance. In this way it is hoped that organisations will be able to improve the competencies of their employees more quickly as business requirements change. PROLIX has set up test beds in four different fields (banking, telecoms, publishing and social care) to see if the approach works. SCIE is responsible for the social care test-bed and will assess whether PROLIX works, meets users' needs and is capable of general roll out in a public service context.

This is a project under the European Union's Framework 6 research and development programme.