We recently launched Ymlaen, the new research, innovation and improvement strategy for social care in Wales.
We’re grateful to everyone who helped us to develop it.
Here, Lisa Trigg, our Assistant Director of Research, Data and Innovation, shares some of the work that went into developing the strategy.
Wrapping research, innovation and improvement into one strategy
The new strategy replaces the Social care research and development strategy 2018 to 2023 we published in partnership with Health and Care Research Wales.
We’ve broadened the new strategy to include innovation and improvement. Thinking about research, innovation and improvement separately doesn’t always reflect how people working in social care think about their work. They may think about ‘new ways of doing things’ or ‘understanding what works’.
We want to make the strategy work for social care, while still recognising that the three strands deserve specific attention for us and our partners.
You can read more about what the first strategy achieved in a separate blog.
What we mean by research, innovation and improvement
Research means trying to gather new knowledge by addressing defined questions with systematic and rigorous methods. The strategy uses a broad definition of research that includes but also goes beyond academic research to cover practice-based research and evaluation. We want people to feel confident to do their own research in their preferred language, to evaluate their ways of working, and to use evidence to inform their practice. We also want to support our academic research partners to do high-quality research and we’ll promote this across social care.
Innovation is about using fresh knowledge to improve how things are done in a way that’s new to a particular setting, or to social care. Innovation happens in different ways, and on different scales. It can be about making the system easier to work in, changing the way a service is delivered, creating new digital technologies, or introducing new ways to approach practice. Social care practitioners innovate on a daily basis, to respond to what matters to the people they’re supporting. Balancing rights and responsibilities with what matters to people is a key part of their role.
Improvement is more difficult to define and means many things to different people. It involves incremental and positive change, and looking for different ways to plan, manage and deliver care and support. It’s different from innovation because it includes continuity – the new ways of doing things are based on existing models.
What is Social Care Wales’s role?
We published the first research strategy jointly with Health and Care Research Wales. This time we’re leading the strategy, to reflect us being the lead strategic organisation for research, innovation and improvement in social care in Wales.
We work closely with Health and Care Research Wales to make sure its strategic plan supports social care, and that both strategies complement each other.
Social Care Wales is also the joint owner of the workforce strategy for health and social care, along with Health Education and Improvement Wales. We’ll be working to make sure the strategies work together and deliver more than the sum of their parts.
Our most important role is to bring partner organisations together to make sure that we’re delivering for the people who work in social care in Wales. That means making sure we’re getting the most out of our work, by setting priorities that reflect social care needs and making sure we don’t duplicate or repeat each other’s work.
It’s also essential to make better sense of our various services and support so that people in social care can navigate them more easily.
Setting the groundwork for Ymlaen
We brought in some external help to make sure we could talk to a broad range of people and that they felt comfortable being honest about what’s needed.
Alexis Pala and Babs Lewis at the Wales Centre for Public Policy helped us with all of the engagement sessions and with setting up and running the consultation.
Having Alexis and Babs involved was particularly valuable as they helped us with the user research for our approach to supporting innovation and are familiar with what we do and how we work.
Alexis and Babs held 15 ‘cuppas’ - one-to-one conversations with stakeholders who have an interest in research, innovation and improvement in social care in Wales. We wanted to look back at the impact of the first strategy and think about what to carry forward into the next. We also wanted to find out the best ways of working together with our partners to deliver the strategy.
We then ran three theory of change workshops to think about the strategy with partner organisations. We focused on building the relationships needed to deliver the strategy, on what we need to prioritise and do, and what resources and assets are available to us.
We held two thematic workshops with 21 stakeholders to listen to a diverse range of voices. We invited people with professional or personal experience of working with equality, diversity and inclusion, or an interest in the topic, and others with an interest in promoting and supporting the Welsh language in social care. We used an approach called Liberating Structures to help get the best out of the workshops.
We held a two-day horizon-scanning workshop with our own staff involved in research, innovation and improvement. This was to review what was coming out of the 'cuppas' and workshops and to discuss the changes we’d like to see Social Care Wales make in social care.
Alexis and Babs then brought all this evidence together and handed it over to us. A small group of us then drafted the strategy.
We shared the first draft with some of the people involved in the conversations and workshops, before launching the consultation.
Consulting on the draft strategy
We launched the consultation for the draft strategy in October 2023.
We wanted to give people different ways of contributing. As well as inviting people to give written feedback in a variety of ways, we presented and discussed the strategy in person at meetings and at a number of conferences in the autumn.
We also held workshops with people working in social care, including front-line workers, people leading provider organisations and people with a particular interest in equality, diversity and inclusion, including promotion of the Welsh language.
We’d like to take the opportunity to thank all the people involved in the early engagement and those who took the time to respond to our consultation, both in person and in writing.
We used the feedback we received during the consultation period to put the finishing touches to the strategy.
Launching the strategy
We launched the new strategy at an online event on May 22, which was attended by a range of partners and stakeholders.
We'll now work with our partners to deliver the strategy's ambitions.
You can read the strategy in full on the Social Care Wales website.
You can also download a PDF version of the strategy by clicking here.
Find out more
Please contact ymlaen@socialcare.wales if you'd like to know more about the strategy and how we'll put it into practice.
We'd also love to hear from you if you feel your organisation's work could help us deliver the strategy.
