Evidence-based practice group in Carmarthenshire

What is the project?

The evidence-based practice group at Carmarthenshire Social Services is a place where members can share resources, updates and events to promote evidence-enriched decision-making in social work.

Members also get together to discuss social care research and evidence in different ways and connect practitioners with researchers and members of Social Care Wales’s Evidence Community.

The group’s goal is to encourage social care practitioners to engage with social care research and bring it into their practice.

The group completed an action learning set (ALS) to set its priorities for the year with the support of Developing Evidence-Enriched Practice (DEEP) and Social Care Wales’s knowledge mobilisation lead.

An ALS is a group of people in a workplace who meet with the specific intention of solving workplace problems. The main aim of an ALS is to come away with a set of realistic actions that will help to solve or understand the issues.

The group’s current priorities are:

• quality of life in care homes
• child-to-parent abuse
• neurodiversity
• the impact of COVID
• team resilience.

The group is attracting more interest and was recently asked to support the coordination of a conference for unpaid carers.

Why is it being carried out?

Social care practitioners face a number of barriers to meaningfully engaging with social care research, including time and access.

This group has been created to help break down these barriers and build practitioners’ confidence in engaging with evidence.

Where and when is the work taking place?

The work is taking place in Carmarthenshire, and members of the group meet both online and in person.

Who’s involved?

There are more than 80 social workers signed up to be part of this group. DEEP and Social Care Wales’ knowledge mobilisation team have supported the group with implementing different and creative ways to share social care research.

The group regularly invites guest speakers to share their knowledge, such as Neath Port Talbot Social Services, who are also trying to embed a research culture.

What have they learnt from the work?

Social workers have fed back that sharing knowledge and experience across teams and disciplines has been a valuable experience.

Meeting in person is welcomed and supports creating connections across the authority and beyond, sharing knowledge.

Social workers appreciate how the group is rooted in practice and looks to directly address practice priorities.

How to get in touch

To find out more about this group, please contact Mair Davies at at Carmarthenshire Social Services on mairdavies@carmarthenshire.gov.uk.