Evaluating social work
Sharing evidence of best practice Evaluating social work practice is important to ensure that positive outcomes are being achieved. What Works for Children’s Social Care is an organisation focusing on collating evidence of best practice and sharing this with practitioners and decision-makers from across the sector. We speak directly to Head of Practice, Anna Bacchoo, to find out more about the importance of evaluation and about how local authorities can get involved with their innovative Practice In Need of Evidence (PINE) programme.
What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) is looking to establish an evidence store of ‘tried and tested’ interventions which have proven effectiveness. Why is this so important for the future of the social work profession? We feel passionately that high quality evidence about what works can lead to improved outcomes for children and their families. Therefore, we are setting out a comprehensive programme of work to improve evidence in children’s social care. The first step is to collate existing evidence and make it accessible. Working with our research partners, Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE) at Cardiff University, we have summarised existing systematic reviews and academic studies which are presented in easy to read, bitesize formats in our Evidence Store, which is available on our website. We have also rated each entry in the Evidence Store in terms of effectiveness and the strength of the evidence available, making it quick and easy to understand what the evidence says about a particular intervention.
What is the PINE programme and why is it relevant for social work teams? In the process of setting up our organisation, we have engaged widely with local authority social care teams. We saw that there is excellent practice happening in organisations across the country (regardless of Ofsted rating) but in the vast majority of circumstances, there was no evidence to demonstrate that practice is making a difference to families. Although we have many practitioners who are committed to being evidence-based in their approach, we were struck by a lack of resources and opportunity to undertake evaluations that would generate evidence about what works. So, we created our PINE programme to identify practice in social care organisations which lack a robust evidence base but practitioners believe to be working. The programme supports these social care organisations to evaluate their own practice using robust methods. It’s very important for practitioners to understand what works, so they can use effective ways of working with people and ultimately see improved outcomes.
You’re working with several local authorities already (including Bath and North East Somerset Council, Brighton and Hove City Council and Royal Borough of Greenwich) to help them identify practices which have the 30
