Find out about the Institute's current and past project work.
Find out about the Institute's current and past project work.
The Institute's current work is based around three themes:
The scope of these three key areas of work is such that, in addition to the work itself, the Institute will assess the need to widen its membership, strengthen its governance arrangements and develop new ways of involving its stakeholders.
The new honours degree, introduced by the Scottish universities in 2004, is based on the Standards in Social Work Education (SiSWE). Between October 2003 and July 2005, eleven core Institute projects related directly to the development of the new programmes. The projects involved the member universities in working together and with the other groups involved in social work education to find new and improved ways to meet the standards and the policy objectives that underpin them. Areas of work included practice learning, integration of learning, new assessment methods and the involvement of service users and carers. The Institute's future work in this area aims to ensure that programmes continue to meet policy objectives and improve, that curriculum developments are evidence-based and that good practice is effectively shared among social care educators.
It is generally accepted that social care practice and education should be based on evidence about what works and what does not to achieve specific outcomes in different circumstances. There are however currently very few examples of thoroughly evaluated activity in social care. The Institute aims to encourage greater evaluation of practice and education for practice by everyone involved in social care education and practice and to make the information learned from these evaluations easily accessible to all. The most important aspect of this work will be to ensure that what we learn has a real impact on what goes on in social care practice and is of benefit to the people who use social care services.
The aim of this area of work is to help to develop a strong learning culture throughout the social services workforce and to ensure that, at all levels, the staff who deliver social services have the skills and knowledge to do the job. The Institute is one of several bodies currently addressing these matters so work will often be done jointly with others. The Institute's areas of work will focus on developing and hosting the teaching and learning resources needed by a learning workforce and ensuring that the right educational programmes are being developed to meet the changing needs of the workforce.