Making Research Count

Lead university staff
Professor Jill Manthorpe
jill.manthorpe@kcl.ac.uk

Professor Jane Tunstill
Visiting Professor, Social Care Workforce Unit
jane@tunstill.plus.com

Research Director and Coordinator: James Blewett
james.blewett@virgin.net

Members
Bromley, Ealing, Greenwich, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark, Surrey, Sutton, Wandsworth, Westminster and Amicus social work recruitment agency.

Regional approach
The underlying principle of the collaboration is that practice must be informed by a robust knowledge base that includes research, practitioner and service user expertise.

The partnership between the university and the agencies is negotiated through a regional steering committee although each agency constructs a programme that meets its local needs. For most agencies this includes a series of local workshops, which are facilitated by research and academic staff but are very much about building a dialogue between research and practice. Local programmes have also included journal clubs, seminars for managers and local conferences.

There is an email enquiry service where practitioners can request information relating to research to experienced research and academic staff. In addition, recognising the often limited developmental opportunities for experienced practitioners and first line mangers, we have also organised an action learning set to facilitate reflective practice.

Making Research Count works across service user groups in our region and over the last year has began to develop a full adult services programme, the mental health dimension being supported by our association with the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

Partnership with University of Bedfordshire
King’s has formed a partnership with the University of Bedfordshire to provide a number of shared events across the South East region. This includes six policy forums a year. These are events where managers of social work and social care practice can come together to hear from leaders in the field of research, practice and service user involvement. Each event tries to careful balance the knowledge presented in these three areas. The policy forums are followed by practice development events where those attending the larger events can come together and follow up one of the presentations in more detail and apply the findings directly to policy and practice. Last year 750 people attended the policy forums and 300 attended the practice development days.

The university department in which the regional programme has been developed:
Making Research Count is located within the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. This is a Department of Health funded national research centre that is at the heart of research and policy developments, currently working on, for example, the evaluation of the new social work degree. As well as this work, which is so crucial in the current evolution of policy and practice regarding workforce planning in social care, the Unit at King’s has considerable expertise on adult services and on mental health through its link to the Institute of Psychiatry.

Website
Information about the work of Making Research Count at King's College London is available at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/scwru/count

Information about the work of the department and research undertaken is available at:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/interdisciplinary/scwru/index.html

Information about the work and research of the Institute of Psychiatry is available at:
http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/