Scie aims to find “the lost voice of practitioners”

The expertise of users, carers and practitioners will be just as
important as academic research in the work of the Social Care
Institute of Excellence.

Amanda Edwards, head of social services quality strategy, at the
Department of Health, told a conference today that Scie would be
using evidence from a range of sources including SSI and Joint
review inspections and user practitioner and manager perspectives
as well as academic research findings.

Finding the “lost voice of the practitioners” would be one of
its tasks, she told an event in Hove organised by the Social
Services Research Group.

She said the government’s quality strategy for social care must
engage not only large public sector organisations but also a large
number of very small private businesses as a growing proportion of
provision is in the private sector.

Scie should be up and running this year she said but the process
of building the “knowledge base” would be gradual.

It would commission some work and do some work itself, reviewing
existing research and identifying other sources of knowledge.

“Different sources of knowledge will be brought to the table on
an equal basis but each will then be subject to the same rigorous
assessment process,” she said. She also assured the conference that
Scie’s work would be as transparent as possible.

One of the government’s aims for Scie was to create a workforce
more confident about why they do what they do and so to create more
equal partnerships with other professionals.