SCIE’s work on children's and families' services - ongoing work

Assessing the social care needs of children with complex health problems and their families (Project: 2.08)

The knowledge review looks at what is known about the social care needs of children with complex health care needs, exploring how best to meet these needs in ways that least disrupt the ordinary life of children and their families. It will describe what knowledge is available, highlight the evidence that has emerged and draw practice points from the evidence.

Second stage SCIE work

CDC is currently working with five Local Authority Pathfinders in action learning sets to develop thinking and ideas about moving practice and commissioning forward in line with the principles of the government initiative ‘Aiming High for Disabled Children '. Members of the learning sets are facing the challenge of moving services forward in line with these principles as they are unsure of the research base behind the practice. They have expressed a concern that without understanding what research says in this area then they are unable to see if service development initiatives will be resilient enough to produce better practice.

Therefore, SCIE plans to add value to the learning sets by contributing knowledge from the SCIE KR and other appropriate resources for example, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Social Policy Research Unit . SCIE will work with the Pathfinders to establish what areas of knowledge are needed and the ways in which they prefer it to be presented. Part Two will run for the lifetime of the Action Learning sets, or as long as this is practicable. This work will then be shared with other pathfinder groups through the ‘Aiming High' information system to share good practice ideas. These examples will then also be incorporated into SCIE's good practice framework to help disseminate the practice examples to a wider audience.

The CDC manager will discuss this proposal with the Pathfinder learning sets in early May 2008 and SCIE Project team members  will attend the action learning sets to present the findings of the research and link this to the work that the pathfinder areas are undertaking, helping them to think about how to establish an evidence base for change. This work will then be shared with other pathfinder groups through the ‘Aiming High' information system.

Assessment of SCIE's input in terms of usefulness, accessibility, and acceptability will be built in: project members will gather feedback by informal discussion at the time and perhaps by more formal techniques such as interviews and questionnaires. It is also hoped to monitor outcomes, for example, to establish whether knowledge has informed practice and facilitated positive practice change by asking learning set members to report and self evaluate this.  

Working with challenging and disruptive situations in residential care (Project: 2.10)

The overall aim of the commission is to identify what is known about effective working in challenging and disruptive situations in residential childcare. The knowledge review will report the findings gathered through the research review and the practice survey and both will attend to material that examines:

• What is known about incidents
• The views of children and young people and residential child care staff and managers.
• The identification and effectiveness of interventions:
• The policy context for effective strategies and interventions
• The implications of implementing effective interventions

E-learning objects are being developed for this product.

Managing risk and minimising mistakes in services to children and families - piloting a systems approach to case reviews (Project: 2.06.01)

In this project we are exploring ways that organisations can better learn from practice experience and improve inter-agency working, in order to better safeguard children. Specifically, we are piloting a "systems approach" to case reviews as a potentially useful method of analysing practice to maximise learning: "Inter-agency Systems Reviews". This will include exploring how "critical reflection" might fit with, and add to, a systems approach to case reviews.

Both approaches concentrate not on judging people but on understanding why workers (at all levels) followed certain courses of action. Consequently, they both require and result in an organisational shift from a ‘culture of blame' in which discussion of incidents is prohibited by fear of personal reprimand, to an ‘open, learning culture' which endorses and encourages learning from practice.

This is the second phase of a project aimed at supporting the safeguarding children agenda across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It specifically supports the development of collaborative, inter-agency working that new safeguarding arrangements require. It will aid the introduction of Local safeguarding Children's Boards in England and Wales and work of Area Child Protection Committee's/Trust Child Protection Panels in Northern Ireland, and will benefit a range of other inter-agency forums.

SCIE guidance for parental mental health and child welfare (Project: 2.11)

SCIE are collaborating with the NICE to complete a wide ranging review of what is known about working with parents with mental health problems and their children and the review findings will be used to develop the first national cross cutting guidance for health and social care staff in and adult and children's services.  The guidelines will be implemented and their impact evaluated in 5 pilot sites in England.

Common Assessment Framework (Wales) (Project: 2.12)

SCIE is working with the Welsh Assembly Government and SSIW on a project to pilot the common assessment framework, develop a Web-enabled database and evaluate the learning from the pilot.

Follow up work to support implementation of the NICE/ SCIE guidance on parenting programmes (Project: 2.14)

The project has investigated practice amongst eight to ten parenting programmes across England and Wales. It builds on the NICE/SCIE findings and recommendations, and how these can inform the design and execution of a wider range of programmes operating in children's services.

The second stage of the project will be an interactive practice guide which will focus on three main areas: planning programmes, including engaging parents,  delivering programmes and follow-up. The guide will be shorter than previous practice guides and will integrate eLearning concepts such as video and audio, audit and questionnairres, and visual cues. The primary audience is practioners who deliver parenting programmes. The secondary audience,  parents,  will be included and the guide will also address their needs and concerns.   

Media training for care experienced young people (Project: 1.17)

This project aims to provide media training for care experienced young people.  This has been done through the provision of two training sessions for 2 small groups of care experience young people in London and Cardiff.  The materials that were developed for the training will then be developed into an online training resource which would help other organisations to put together their own similar training.

Research briefing - Factors that assist early identification of children in need in integrated or inter agency settings (Project: 6.15.03)

Research briefing - Reviewing the experiences of BME parents with mental health problems and their children (Project: 6.15.04)

Development of Learning Objects - Children of Prisoners (Project: 8.06.06)

This e-learning project aims to produce a set of e-learning resources that explore key aspects of the theme of 'children of prisoners'.

The project builds upon an earlier SCIE project which aimed to shed light on the significant, but unknown, number of children who are affected by the loss of a parent or carer to prison. The overall aim of the project was to illustrate how practice in this area of work can best meet the five outcomes of Every Child Matters.

The project included amongst its deliverables: an overview of the literature, a survey of practice and a commissioned practice project carried out by the Thames Valley Partnership. The overall objective was to indicate what can improve the interface between criminal justice, health, social care and education services to ensure better outcomes for children of prisoners in maintaining family ties.

SCIE has decided to develop a set of e-learning resources that builds upon the findings of this earlier project as it feels that e-learning can benefit people working in social care or taking the Social Work degree through offering more engaging and accessible resources.

The decision to develop e-learning resources to support workforce training and continuous personal development is supported by SCIE's earlier consultation with Skills for Care to establish an e-learning strategy for social care in England and is made possible through the the Department of Health's (DH) allocation of resources to SCIE ‘to assist the social care community to make the best use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning to deliver an improved service to users and carers' (DH e-learning Steering Group 2003).

SCIE, therefore, is commissioning the production of a number of e-learning resources (3 interactive/multimedia learning objects and a number of suppport resources to aid trainers) on effective working in challenging and disruptive situations in residential childcare that can be used by social care educators/trainers within their teaching/training or by individual users for self-study. They will lend themselves to a range of teaching and learning scenarios and contexts - for example, they will be effective used individually as stand alone units of study or equally effective used together as a mini-course. They will lend themselves to use as a support element in face to face training sessions as well as elements in a wholly online programme of study.

These learning resources will be made freely available for any organisation or individual to use from the SCIE website. In addition to allow organisations to download them into their virtual learning environment or learning management system (VLE/LMS), they will be included in digital repositories for HE educators, such as Jorum (http://www.jorum.ac.uk/), the Learning Exchange (http://www.sieswe.org/learnx) or Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/).

Number of ongoing projects: 10