Beware of bees! Creative knowledge exchange and #JSWEC

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of attending #JSWEC, the joint social work education and research conference, for the fourth year running. #JSWEC jointly focuses, as the name suggests, on research (new findings, methodological issues, PhDs and Professional Doctorates in process etc) and education (initial social work education, post qualifying education, ongoing CPD and […]

What’s my beef with awards all about!

The first award I ever won was a Tiny Tots Judo Award. I was six, very cute, two little plaits, white judo suit, quite shy (believe it or not) but put me in a judo ring and I became alive. Here I could fight with the boys and it was ok (there was only one other […]

Can social media improve service quality? #NCF2014

Last week I had the absolute pleasure to attend #NCF2014, the annual conference of the National Care Forum. This year’s conference saw a room full of Chief Execs, Trustees and colleagues from care provider organisations debating the eternal question of how best to focus on Bringing Quality to Life. The conference opened with this film, made […]

Conference Life in Second Life

I’m going to start with an apology for not blogging recently, I’ve been a bit busy and launched VivaCards last week – go take a look if you know of anyone approaching a viva who might be interested, all feedback very welcome @VivaCards. Right, plug and apology over, this post is about attending a conference […]

Social care evidence in practice: an English perspective #KTNConf

I’m typing this sat in the beautiful Banff Springs hotel in Canada where I’ve spent the last couple days at #KTNConf Inspiring Change. Organised and hosted by the Health Research Transfer Network of Alberta (RTNA), this conference has focused on the role of knowledge transfer in inspiring change. Rarely have I had the privilege to […]

Quiet inspiration and the unspoken leaders amongst us #ff

Earlier this week I had a brief conversation on twitter with @crouchendtiger7 and @GilesCharnaud in response to Andrea sharing that she was on the panel for the HSJ Most Inspirational Women in Healthcare Award. Andrea was asking for views (especially from people outside the NHS) about who inspires them and why. I offered two suggestions, […]

Welcome to my professional blog

I’ve been blogging in a personal capacity for a number of years and having left full-time employment I thought I’d take the opportunity to start a professional blog on my new website. It’s likely to cover topics such as research impact, utilisation of knowledge, dissemination of research findings, social media and it’s role as an […]

Getting social care evidence into practice

There have been a couple of discussions on twitter and blog posts I’ve read recently that I’ve wanted to reply to, the most clear one came from @Ermintrude2 who wrote an excellent post about her struggles to keep up with research while working in frontline practice. Ermintrude, works as a social worker in an integrated […]