I’m heading to London in the morning for a workshop organised by Skills for Care that is looking at the role of research evidence in workforce development. The work is being conducted by Consilium and I’ve been helping out with a few ideas and perspectives and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m pleased that Skills for Care are looking at this area, for all there is a growing focus on the role of evidence in social care, there is still a long way to go in my eyes.

At the end of last year Consilium conducted a survey of employers and interested parties to identify how they used evidence and the headline findings are provided in the attached document (along with the timetable for the day and the audit exercise we shared in advance). It is these findings that will be explored in more detail in the workshop.

There are four key questions:

1. How can we help improve awareness of research in your organisation for workforce development?

2. What do accessible research outputs look like in terms of structure, tone, content, visual approach?

3. Who should research be aimed at within your organisation, what products would suit them best, and how will your organisation support them to use them?

4. How can you help Skills for Care move forward in this work?

The final element of the audit that we sent to participants asked them to bring with them something that they thought communicated information in a useful or engaging manner. This would be my example if I was asked – James and the Giant Peach available to purchase here, I think it’s brilliant!!

I’m going to attempt to live tweet the workshop using #SfCEvidence hashtag and I’d really welcome your input and views if you work in social care, or indeed if you work in knowledge transfer or mobilisation or workforce development in another sector. There are no right or wrong answers, I’m just there to stretch the thinking a little, so I’d really appreciate your ideas either here, by email or on twitter. Thank you.