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Research Unbound - Linking research and practice in social care

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Academic rigour, journalistic flair

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Jem Bendell encourages us to think about societal collapse in ways that are 'profound and startlingly original', with the potential to birth whole new social movements, says Tom Doig.

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The Conversation: In-depth analysis, research, news and ideas from leading academics and researchers.

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Curated by professional editors, The Conversation offers informed commentary and debate on the issues affecting our world. Plus a Plain English guide to the latest developments and discoveries from the university and research sector.

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sharing audio

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SoundCloud - Listen to free music and podcasts on SoundCloud

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SoundCloud is a music and podcast streaming platform that lets you listen to millions of songs from around the world, or upload your own. Start listening now!

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Using social media to enhance your research activities

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Using social media to enhance your research activities

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Using social media to enhance your research activities - Opus

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In this invited paper the author summarises the benefits which can be gained from use of social media to support research activities. The paper is based on personal experiences in using social media to engage with fellow researchers, meet new collaborators and co-authors and enhance awareness and impact of research papers.

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Why open access should be a key issue for university leaders

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Why open access should be a key issue for university leaders

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Universities are digital machines these days. But many of the decisions that have to be made as a result are not technical at all. They are about the nature of research and its public benefits, about how learning and teaching takes place, and how we confront difficult ethical issues. Strategic choices that are made now will have significant implications for the ways in which knowledge will be created and shared in the future.

We couldn't operate universities without the digital systems that run payroll, student registrations, finance and the teaching timetable. Our libraries spend more on electronic publications than paper. We reach large numbers of students online using increasingly significant digital media. But while bandwidth is now as basic a need as electricity and parking, there are critical choices ahead.

Central to these is openness - the extent to which those working and studying within the university and college system can get access to any digitally-based information they need without encountering a virtual gateway: a password, subscription requirement or payment.

Paywalls and passwords are an irritating but natural consequence of the privatisation of the web; they are also essential for online security. For the future of research, though, the need for openness is far more than a convenience. It arises because the volume and rate of production of online publications and digital data sets has now outgrown the limits of conventional research methods and is changing the ways in which new knowledge is created. Without openness across global digital networks, it is doubtful that large and complex problems in areas such as economics, climate change and health can be solved.

There are two primary reasons why these changes to research are taking place:

1) The sheer volume of new, peer-reviewed publications is already too great for manual review in many fields of study. In medicine for example, more than two new papers are published every minute. The volume of research outputs is accentuated by China and India, the emerging giants in university-based research.

Thirty years ago, when today's senior researchers were in their early careers, big university and copyright libraries could claim to stock printed copies of everything published in a discipline; today, many researchers never need to enter the library building at all.

2) The sharply declining unit cost of bandwidth, digital storage and processing capacity, combined with the breathtaking pace of technical innovation, is allowing massive, almost instantaneous flows of digital data across the world. In many cases, these flows are being constantly fed by devices linked together as the "internet of things". Some of these devices are highly sophisticated - for example, real-time seismic measurements used to predict tsunamis and terrestrial earthquakes. Others are commonplace - citizen journalists using smart phones to upload images or the millions of daily financial transactions that track economic trends.

These massive digital data flows are the new raw materials for research. For highly complex problems such as climate change, epidemiology, financial stability and space exploration, access to global big data is already a basic condition for research to take place at all.

Protocols

Appropriate and effective policies and protocols that ensure openness are essential in ensuring access to both research publications and massive digital data sets. Automated searches of the publication record are not feasible if subscription requirements and paywalls constantly prevent access to the copy-of-record. This is why the current debate about "green" open access - delivered by repositories - and "gold" open access - delivered by journals - and article-processing charges is so important.

Access to massive digital data sets is invariably complex and contentious. Nation states are touchy about rights and security (all the more so, given WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden). Individuals and interest groups worry about rights to privacy and commercial misuse of personal data. Researchers are concerned about the premature release of research data and the ethics of openness when information is collected with assurances of anonymity. Each of these is a complex set of issues in its own right.

Openness is also central to the continuing development of learning and teaching. While Moocs took the headlines in 2013, innovation in the flipped classroom - where pupils complete course material ahead of lessons to free up time with their teachers - is rapidly moving on, often putting social media at the centre of course design.

Our universities were built from the principles of scarcity and closure: restricted access to libraries; special knowledge that could only be passed on in the lecture theatre; closed communities of scholarship. Today we are drowning in digital information, available almost everywhere via interfaces and cheap devices that know where we are. Learning and teaching is about making sense of this bewildering open world, with all its opportunities and its increasing dangers.

Digital technologist specialists are important in every university; we need them to keep our systems running and to look ahead for coming innovations that will require investment and changes in the ways that we work. But the strategic and ethical questions that arise from the rapid and comprehensive advances in digital technologies - and particularly openness and its consequences - are for anyone in a leadership position, whether an academic programme convenor, a dean or a vice-chancellor. All universities are now digital, and all research and teaching will be shaped by continuing technological change.
Martin Hall is chair of Jisc and vice-chancellor of the University of Salford - follow him on Twitter This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next university role? Browse Guardian jobs for hundreds of the latest academic, administrative and research posts. Topics

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Why open access should be a key issue for university leaders

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Universities are digital machines these days. But many of the decisions that have to be made as a result are not technical at all. They are about the nature of research and its public benefits, about how learning and teaching takes place, and how we confront difficult ethical issues.

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inSocialWork Podcast Series - UB Social Work

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inSocialWork is the podcast series of the University at Buffalo School of Social Work. The purpose of this series is to engage practitioners and researchers in lifelong learning and to promote research to practice and practice to research.

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vivavocepodcasts.com - This website is for sale! - academia dissemination impact podcast research researchers science social viva Resources and Information.

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This website is for sale! vivavocepodcasts.com is your first and best source for all of the information you're looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, vivavocepodcasts.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

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Impact by blogging

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It's that time of year again. The parole season 'tis upon us. As I am serving what is known in Scotland as an extended sentence, I can apply for parole every twelve months until my release date. This year is my eighth and, thankfully, final time applying for early release. Applying for parole normally brings with it a tide of stress and anxiety not only about the entire process itself but also apprehension surrounding daily life upon re-entry into society. The irony about this whole scenario is that never before have I worried or even bothered thinking about these issues. This is because I have never expected parole (except in 2017 where I had so many things stacked in my favour and was still unsuccessful).

In the not so distant past, I saw myself as someone incapable of 'going straight'. I felt that no matter how hard I tried to convince people I had changed, nobody would believe it. In this way, my philosophy shifted from 'no quarter!' to 'you can't swim against the tide!' In those days of pre-academic darkness, the problems that came with 'going straight' belonged to others. Coincidentally, prisoner re-entry and employing people with previous convictions featured in the news recently (after I had been reading up on these issues). According to the BBC (2018) report, a new organisation, Release Scotland, consists of companies, charities and government agencies seeking to get those who have previous convictions into meaningful employment. The narrative stated that 75% of businesses in the UK would not consider employing someone who had previously been convicted (BBC, 2018).

Ironically, this article was published on the same day as another news piece that claimed a third of Scottish men have a criminal conviction, according to researchers at the University of Glasgow (Marland, 2018). Does that indicate that 75% of companies in the UK would not even consider employing a third of Scottish men? Wouldn't it be more financially and socially beneficial for society to employ people leaving prison instead of marginalising them? Isn't it possible that this marginalisation compounds the likelihood of recidivism? Doesn't a third of Scottish men constitute a potentially valuable source of labour? Wouldn't employing this portion of men aid their integration and resettlement back into society?

According to Ager and Strang (2004: 5), an individual can be classified as integrated when they access and benefit from "public outcomes within employment, housing, education, health etc, which are equivalent to those achieved within the wider host communities [and] to confidently engage in that society in a manner consistent with the shared notions of nationhood and citizenship" (cited in Kirkwood and McNeill, 2015: 9). Moreover, Kazemian (2007: 22) points out that "desistance is likely to be maximized when intervention efforts integrate both rehabilitation and reintegration dimensions". Isn't it logical to postulate that employing those with criminal records would indicate both 'rehabilitation and 'reintegration dimensions', which, in turn, would 'maximise desistance?'

Encouragingly, Sir Richard Branson called upon more employers to take on ex-offenders in an interview with UK-wide prison newspaper Inside Time(James, 2016). "People with convictions need the dignity of work", Sir Richard told the editor, Erwin James. He explained how a training programme in Virgin Trains has culminated in employment for a woman with several previous convictions for violence. In fact, BBC News (2018) cites that Virgin Trains is one of the employers that collaborate with Release Scotland to provide work for those with convictions. Then-Justice Minister Michael Gove also explained how the three main factors that stopped people re-offending are: employment, a secure home and strong family bonds (James, 2016). When an individual with previous convictions has something important to lose (their livelihood), I imagine recidivism is a much less appealing option.

While employment, housing and health apply to all of us, I wonder if education is individually specific? For example, I can construct an essay but couldn't change a tire on a car. I guess what I am saying is that intelligence comes in many forms. Even though all of the above indicate bureaucratic notions of inclusivity, I wonder where larger society fits into this picture. For this reason, I recently wondered whether Restorative Justice (RJ) could play some role in prisoner re-entry and desistance. In fact, wouldn't RJ help realise McNeill's (2014) notions of social rehabilitation, where the individual is fully reintegrated of society and becomes a productive member? Moreover, I feel that McNeill and Schinkel's (2015) notion of 'tertiary desistance' and RJ share interconnecting similarities in as much as absorbing 'offenders' back into mainstream society once they have 'made good'. According to Marshall (1999: 6), the fundamental characteristics of RJ are:

Fully attending to victims needs

Preventing recidivism by re-integrating offenders

Enabling offenders to assume responsibility for their actions

Creating a working community that supports the rehabilitation of offenders

Providing a means of avoiding the escalation of criminal justice measures (cited in Cunneen, 2015: 384).

In this way, we can see that both 'offenders' and 'victims' are at the centre of this debate. However, the criminal justice process presents itself as a 'vertical model of justice' (Yazzie, 1994, cited in Fergusson and Muncie, 2010) where external hierarchies of power are utilised to resolve conflicts between individuals or groups in society. In this way, Yazzie (1994: 29-30) argues, "Parties to a dispute have limited power and control over the process [...] When outsiders intervene in a dispute, they impose moral codes upon people who have moral codes of their own. The subjects of adjudication have no power, little or no say about the outcome of a case, and their feelings do not matter" (cited in Fergusson and Muncie, 2010: 74). In fact, Christie (1977) argued that the conflict between individuals and/or groups is their 'property'; property that is subsequently taken over by the state in its role as ultimate 'arbitrator'.

One could therefore postulate that conventional, vertical modes of criminal justice form a triangular shape, with the judge at the pinnacle and the 'offender' and 'victim' at opposite ends of the base. However, 'horizontal models' of dispensation in the RJ sphere are more circular in form where "...no person is above the other. A graphic model often used by Indians to portray this thought is a circle. In a circle, there is no right or left, no beginning or end. Every point (or person) on the line on a circle looks to the same center as the focus. A circle is a symbol of Navajo justice because it is perfect, unbroken, and a simile of unity and oneness" (Yazzie, 1994: 29-30, cited in Fergusson and Muncie, 2010).

In this way, shouldn't an all-inclusive circle represent our own dispute processes in society? "In addition to tangible compensation, restorative justice advocates rebuilding the relationship between the victim and offender. In sharp contrast to the traditional model of justice, restorative justice aims to resolve conflict and restore dialogue between the parties where possible" (Gaudreault, 2005: 6). Personally, I feel that it takes a lot of courage on the part of the 'victim' and 'offender' to participate in the RJ mediation process.

In fact, I recall watching one of the many TV programmes about the American penal system that showed a face-to-face mediation between a prisoner and victim's mother. I was surprised by how nervous the prisoner appeared but I was even more amazed when the victim's mother told the prisoner (who was serving life imprisonment for killing her son) that she had forgiven him. The powerful act of humanity and compassion gave me goose bumps, prompting me to wonder why RJ is non-existent in Scottish prisons. Couldn't this catalyse desistance? Wouldn't such meetings between prisoner and victim not only allow the victim to heal but also to allow the prisoner to appreciate the magnitude of his/her actions? British MP Jeremy Wright (2012) commented that "Restorative Justice has the potential to break the destructive pattern of behaviour of those that offend by forcing them to confront the full extent of the emotional and physical damage they have caused to their victims" (cited in MoJ, 2012: 1).

While I feel that 'forcing [offenders]' is the wrong terminology to use, he still manages to get his point across. I say this because it is easy to read about your mistakes in a bureaucratic report; I imagine it would be a lot harder to look into the eyes of those who were hurt by your actions, especially if they said "I forgive you!" Therein lies the irony - I find myself secretly yearning to be part of such humanity yet am oddly frightened by it at the same time. Intriguingly, Shapland et al. (2011) state that "...restorative justice conferencing may provide a platform upon which intending desisters can set out, in front of their supporters and victims, that they do take responsibility for the offence, that they wish to change their lives, and that they are sorry for the harm the offence has caused [to victims and supporters]" (cited in Shapland and Bottoms, 2017: 762).

Instead of utilising RJ practices to bridge gaps between prisoners and wider society, individuals in prison appear to be fending for themselves vis-à-vis rehabilitation. According to McNeill and Weaver (2010: 8), "It is not enough to have opportunities, 'opportunities' need to be read as opportunities by the offenders themselves". However, where are those 'opportunities?' Is the period of incarceration itself the opportunity? Furthermore, it has been argued that sending people to prison "slows maturation, damages family ties, cements criminal identities and establishes criminal associations and networks" (McNeill and Weaver, 2010: 13). In this way, one could argue that incarceration allows those individuals already criminally disposed to develop and nurture 'criminal capital', compounding the likelihood of recidivism (Bayer et al. 2009, cited in Drago and Galbiati, 2012). Shockingly, Labour MP David Lammy (2017) cites the cost of recidivism to the British taxpayer as somewhere between £9.5 and £13 billion per year. Imagine how much social inequality the state could eradicate with that amount of money.

In fact, Lammy (2017) argues that people trying to 'go straight' should be allowed to present their case before a court with the ultimate aim of sealing their criminal records if they can convince the court of their transformation. In this way, sealing criminal records of those who have demonstrated change will allow individuals to re-integrate into society instead of "trapping offenders in their past, denying dependents an income, and costing the tax payer money" (Lammy, 2017: 64). Lammy's (2017) notion comes in response to a law in the state of Massachusetts where an individual's criminal record can be sealed through judicial process if that person can demonstrate to the court that transformation has been achieved. In fact, couldn't one argue that the state of Massachusetts will extend 'judicial rehabilitation' (McNeill, 2014) to convicted people if they can prove 'moral' and 'psychological rehabilitation' (McNeill, 2014)? Shouldn't Scotland/UK follow suit?

According to Shapland and Bottoms (2017), the width of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (1974) was extended in 2014 vis-à-vis the possibility of sealing criminal records in England and Wales although it is unclear what this entails. The sad fact is that it is the very existence of individual criminal records that impacts upon the re-entry and, in turn, potential desistance of people leaving prison. Employers can't be forced or coerced to provide jobs to ex-offenders. Doesn't this reluctance to provide employment to those with criminal records arguably indicate the apparent belief that 'rehabilitation is dead?' In fact, Healy (2016) argues that "...in economic hard times, even those offenders trying to desist are likely to fail because employers will look elsewhere in the pool of unemployed labour" (cited in Shapland and Bottoms, 2017: 762). I hope that Release Scotland will bridge this gap in the Scottish context.

Interestingly, Weaver (2018) cites how "people with convictions appear to be the only group excluded from the Equality Act 2010's anti-discrimination protections and so one implication might be that people with convictions should be legally recognised as a disadvantaged group entitled to special employment protection". Doesn't this only further marginalise people who have been convicted, making desistance from crime appear as a fantasy rather than helping it become a reality? Hopefully the juxtaposition of businesses under the Release Scotland umbrella will go some way to rectifying this anomaly.

As I near my own release, my mind swirls with these issues. I feel as though I am one of the people at the heart of these problems because, like it or not, most (if not all) of them affect my life in some way. Prisoner re-entry affects me because I am about to leave prison and return to society likely within the next year. Restorative justice could theoretically apply although I feel that, in my own case, it should be the victims' choice whether they feel the process would benefit them. In fact, I am of the view that if those who I have hurt in the past wished to pursue this course of action, then it is my duty to participate whether I want to or not (but that is my personal opinion).

The most applicable issue to my own case, I feel, is desistance. The closer I come to my final parole hearing, the more I think about the big unknown. Will the societal marginalisation and disenfranchisement remain at the prison gates as I exit the institution? Is it possible that I will finally be able to shed my criminal identity in the eyes of the criminal justice apparatus and wider society and, in turn, adopt a freshly constructed academic persona? If the primary purpose of incarceration is 'rehabilitation' then I wonder why the parole board think my past outweighs my transformation.

In fact, Weaver et al. (2012: 94) postulate that the "seriousness of the current offence and criminal career are unrelated to parole board decision making. Decisions tend to be made based on current (at the time of the parole application) propensity to change and to reduced criminogenic need". Personally, I feel that my own situation demonstrates that this is not always the case. My criminogenic need has been reduced through the utilisation of standard risk assessment tools and I have participated in all programmes that were recommended by psychologists in the past. I was recalled to custody in 2011 for two charges of breach of the peace but have been held for seven years (with fourteen months left to serve).

Unfortunately, the parole board has refused to grant my release every year since my recall to custody. I feel that there is nothing more I can do to convince them (or anyone else for that matter) that I am serious about change. However, I think that the much-coveted academic future that potentially awaits me out with these grey walls will render all of the parole rejections insignificant. In other words, I transformed myself in the face of overwhelming adversity and pointlessness while it seemed that the parole function (in my mind, at least) reinforced the negativity of my incarceration. I sometimes wonder if I would have embraced my previous criminal identity had I not met the people who championed me or participated in academic study in prison.

Although many people return to prison, transformation is possible for even those (seemingly) incapable of change. However, I feel that I am simply fortunate that I met the people I did when I did. Maybe transformation was in my life script from day one? Sadly, this may not the case for many of the people who share my current living space. In this way, Travis and Petersilia (2001: 299) ominously state that "No matter what punishment philosophy sends prisoners to prison, no matter how their release is determined, with few exceptions they all come back. It is hard to find a coherent re-entry philosophy in the current state of affairs".

While I feel that this statement could apply to all of those that have been incarcerated, one could argue that winning the battle within oneself vis-à-vis criminality is the first step towards winning the war that sees 'offenders' marginalised and disenfranchised in societies across the globe. In this way, they appear to be held prisoners of their own pasts. I feel that I have won the inner battle that helped deconstruct my criminal identity through higher education. But there is no denying that relapse could occur if I received zero help or support from others. I would like to say that it doesn't bear thinking about but anything is possible. However, I have my new persona and mentality (and my son) going in my favour, which are undoubtedly protective factors.

Despite the fact that I have fought a mental, emotional and spiritual war within my own heart, mind and soul, I realise that I am still human and, therefore, fallible like everyone else. I realise I have crossed legal, social and moral boundaries in the past. But I want to make it right somehow. Undoubtedly, criminality causes individuals to cross the threshold separating mainstream society from its dark underbelly. In fact, the Russian word for 'crime' ( prestupleniye) denotes the crossing of a boundary, from one dimension to another. This brings me to my title-related metaphor. In Roman times, there was a spirit called Janus who was a symbol of archways and doorways. In fact, these gates were left open in times of war and closed during periods of peace and tranquillity. I like this metaphor because doorways and archways symbolise the crossing of a threshold, from one dimension to another. My own individual Gates of Janus opened, in my opinion, when my Dad died.

Hopefully they will close as the prison gates slam shut behind me.
References
BBC News (2018) 'New Body Aims to Get Ex-Prisoners Back into Work', BBC News [online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-44196724(Accessed 28th May 2018).

Christie, N. (1977) 'Conflicts as Property', The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 17(1): 1-14.

Cunneen, C. (2015) 'Restorative Justice', in McLaughlin, E. and Muncie, J. (eds.) The SAGE Dictionary of Criminology (3 rd edition), London: SAGE Publications (this edition 2015).

Drago, F. and Galbiati, R. (2012) 'Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment', American Journal of Applied Economics.

Fergusson, R. and Muncie, J. (2010) 'Conflict Resolution, Restoration and Informal Justice', in Drake, D., Muncie, J. and Westmarland, L. (eds.) Criminal Justice: Local and Global, Willan Publishing/The Open University: Milton Keynes (pp.71-104).

Gaudreault, A. (2005) 'The Limits of Restorative Justice', Symposium of the École Nationale de la Magistrature, Paris: Édition Dalloz.

James, E. (2016) 'People with Convictions Need the Dignity of Work', Inside Time, August 2016, issue no. 206. ISSN 1743-7342.

Kazemian, L. (2007) 'Desistance From Crime: Theoretical, Empirical, Methodological and Policy Considerations', Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Volume 23(1): 5-27.

Kirkwood, S. and McNeill, F. (2015) 'Integration and Reintegration: Comparing pathways to citizenship through asylum and criminal justice', Criminology and Criminal Justice, Volume 15(5): 511-526.

Lammy, D. (2017) ' The Lammy Review: An Independent Review into the Treatment of, and Outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Individuals in the Criminal Justice System', Available at: http://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lammy-review-final-report

Marland, I. (2018) 'Do a Third of Scots Men Really Have a Criminal Conviction?' BBC News [online]. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44207104(Accessed 23rd May 2018).

McNeill, F. and Weaver, B. (2010) 'Changing Lives? Desistance Research and Offender Management',Glasgow: Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research. Available online at: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202010_03%20-%20Changing%20Lives.pdf

McNeill, F. (2014) 'Punishment as Rehabilitation', in Bruinsma, G. and Weisburd, D. (eds.) Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Springer, New York: 4195-4206.

Shapland, J. and Bottoms, A. (2017) 'Desistance from Crime and Implications for Offender Rehabilitation', in Liebling, A., Maruna, S. and McAra, L. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology(6 th edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp. 744-766).

Travis, J. and Petersilia, J. (2001) 'Re-entry Reconsidered: A New Look at an Old Question', Crime & Delinquency, Volume 47(3): 291-313.

Weaver, B., Tata, C., Munro, M. and Barry, M. (2012) 'The Failure of Recall to Prison: Front-Door and Back-Door Sentencing and the Revolving Door of Prison in Scotland', European Journal of Probation, Volume 4(1): 85-98.

Weaver, B. (2018) 'Are Current Reforms on Criminal Disclosure Going Far Enough?', Inside Time, May 2018, Issue No. 227, ISSN 1743-7342.

Wright, J. (2012) 'Ministerial Foreword', in Restorative Justice Action Plan for the Criminal Justice System, London: Ministry of Justice.

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It's that time of year again. The parole season 'tis upon us. As I am serving what is known in Scotland as an extended sentence, I can apply for parole every twelve months until my release date. This year is my eighth and, thankfully, final time applying for early release.

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Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 8:27PM
(The following series of posts has been written as version 3.0 of a contribution to Mark Amerika's remixthebook Version 1.0 of this material was first presented at The Unbound Book conference, held at Amsterdam Central Library and the Royal Library in Den Haag, May 19-21, 2011. project.
Version 2.0 of this material is due to appear as 'Force of Binding: On Liquid, Living Books (Mark Amerika Mix)' on remixthebook.com, the companion website to Amerika's remixthebook volume. r emixthebook by Mark Amerika will be published by University of Minnesota Press in September, 2011.

What is the unbound book? Can the book be unbound?

*

Is remixthebook, with its literary, philosophical, theoretical, artistic and poetic mash-ups and accompanying website where visual artists, theorists, new media scholars, philosophers and musicians sample source material, ' postproducing it into their own remix/theory performances ', a book unbound?

The Oxford Online Dictionary defines the term ' bound' as follows:

'bound in bind ...tie or fasten (something) tightly together...;
... walk or run with leaping strides...; ... a territorial limit; a boundary...; ... going or ready to go towards a specified place...; ... past and past participle of bind...'

In which case the unbound book would be one that:

had been gathered together and firmly secured, as a pile of pages can be to form a print-on-paper codex volume;

had a certain destiny or destination or had been prepared, going, or ready to go toward a specific place (as in 'homeward bound'), such as perhaps an intended addressee, known reader or identifiable and controllable audience;

and had been springing forward or progressing toward that place or destiny in leaps and bounds.

Had because the use of the past participle suggests such binding is history as far as the book is concerned. Today, in the era of online authorship, comment sections, discussion forums, social tags, RSS feeds, YouTube clips, streaming video, augmented reality, 3D graphics, interactive information visualisations, geolocation search capabilities, crowd sourcing, remixes, mash-ups, and texts being generally connected to a network of other information, data and mobile media environments, the book is being disrupted, dislocated, dispersed. So much so that if the book is to have any future at all in the context of these other supports and modes of reading and writing, it will be in unbound form; a form which, while radically transforming the book, may yet serve to save it and keep it alive.

﻿

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Gary Hall - Media gifts - On the unbound (nature of this) book (version 3.0)

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Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 8:27PM (The following series of posts has been written as version 3.0 of a contribution to Mark Amerika's remixthebook Version 1.0 of this material was first presented at The Unbound Book conference, held at Amsterdam Central Library and the Royal Library in Den Haag, May 19-21, 2011.

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sharing research data

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"As governments and funders of research see the benefit of open content, the creation of recommendations, mandates and enforcement of mandates are coming thick and fast. figshare has always led the way in enabling academics, publishers and institutions to easily adhere to thetse principles in the most intuitive and efficient manner".

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Evidence summary

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Key points

Storytelling influences change at individual practice as well as organisational level

Listening to stories facilitates better person-centred care and can lead to improved services

Hearing personal stories engenders greater understanding, empathy and reflection

Rapport, trust and care can be nurtured in practitioner-service user relationships through storytelling

Personal storytelling benefits the teller as it can empower, encourage personal growth and build resilience

Due consideration needs to be given to ethical issues in storytelling and telling stories has the potential to be demoralising and disempowering for the teller

This Insight was written by Michelle Drumm (Iriss)

Introduction

Ever since human beings sat around the fire in caves, they have told stories to help them grapple with life and the struggle to survive (McKee and Fryer, 2002). Stories give us a deeper insight into lived experience - past, present and imagined futures (McAdams, 2007). It can be argued that the art of telling, and listening to, stories is at the heart of what it means to be human, how human beings articulate their experience of the world and make sense of it.

This review explores what story and storytelling is, and whether autobiographical, first-person storytelling has a valuable impact on practice, and can engender positive, meaningful change for individuals who access support. It examines how storytelling has been used across social services to date, considers its value, and highlights some considerations for those creating and using stories. Case study evidence is provided to showcase the benefits of storytelling in practice.

What is story and storytelling?

A story is a real or imagined account of events that describes experience. The terms 'story' and 'narrative' are often used interchangeably. However, some research highlights that story is the informal account of lived experience, whereas narrative is a structured interpretation of story, which includes researcher additions and omissions (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; East and colleagues, 2010; Haigh and Hardy, 2011).

In the words of Kirkpatrick and colleagues (2007) 'storytelling is the individual account of an event to create a memorable picture in the mind of the listener' (p38). The National Storytelling Network and Scottish Storytelling Centre offer comparative definitions, essentially based around words and actions being used to describe a sequence of events and evoke the imagination of the listener. While storytelling often involves live, person-to-person situations without the use of print or technology, modern easy-to-use video and audio technology provide opportunities for people to create and disseminate stories much more widely and informally. Stories can be oral, written, visual or digital - communicated in various formats and in different voices. The telling is subject to the way a person uses oral (including body language if visual) and written language, or pictures.

Why storytelling is valuable to practice

Stories are used to educate, train, entertain and communicate messages. There is a lot written on the use of storytelling in healthcare (including mental health) and healthcare education contexts, to bring about positive change for patients, and promote best practice for professionals (Kirkpatrick and colleagues, 1997; Roberts, 2000; Gaydos, 2005; Hardy, 2007; Charon, 2009; Haigh and Hardy, 2011). Storytelling has also been used across social services (Cox and colleagues, 2003) and there are many examples available in the Iriss storybank: lx.iriss.org.uk/storybank. However, there is less documented evaluation of how storytelling impacts on practice and the individual. The evidence available on using storytelling in healthcare and healthcare education equally applies to social services. Some of the reasons are detailed below.

Places the person at the centre

Roberts (2000) in a paper on narrative and mental illness highlights that the 'individually meaningful may not be the same as the reproducibly measurable' (p433). He qualifies this with an example of how a man with a long history of schizophrenia identified one particular year in his life as the worst, which was completely at odds with his social ability and clinical response to treatment at the time. It came to light that feelings of rejection and isolation caused by his family situation had negatively affected him throughout that year, which was never picked up by professionals. This resulted in a short sighted analysis of his well being, and one that failed to take account of significant personal and emotional experiences. The telling of story, therefore, gives voice to what experiences mean for an individual, rather than the clinical analysis based on measurable factors alone.

Adds richer dimensions to understanding

Storytelling can communicate the physical (body and verbal language, voice and intonation), intellectual, and emotional aspects of a person in the context of their past or present experiences, which enables a fuller understanding of the individual. Ruggles (2002) claims that a 'good story combines the explicit with the tacit, the information with the emotion' (p2). Charon (2009), a health professional, relates an example of how carefully considering story added to their knowledge and resulted in a positive outcome. The patient, a man who had suffered a major stroke, so passionately expressed the shame of having to rely on the women in his family to push him around in a traditional wheelchair, that it prompted the clinician to not just take account of his immediate medical requirements, but to invest in a motorised wheelchair (rather than an MRI scan). This protected his pride and allowed him to envision a more positive future. This example illustrates how storytelling facilitates richer understanding that forms the basis of good assessment, decision making and positive interventions in practice.

Engenders empathy

Fairbairn (2002) claims that empathy involves the 'attempt imaginatively to inhabit the other's world as that person, rather than the attempt to imagine one's own experiences' (p29). He stresses that while practitioners can care for people without empathising with them, the ability to empathise demonstrates skill in practical care and can help in particular situations, where for example, decisions need to be made on behalf of an individual. Charon (2009), in the course of her interviews with clients, speaks of how she is 'sitting with the self and the body of the patient'.

The Patient Stories digital stories project (Hardy, 2007) also highlights examples of how empathy, especially in relation to understanding cultural diversity, is key to a fuller understanding of a person. The stories offer new perspective and give some experience of the 'other', in contrast to support determined by tick-box exercises and targets underpinned by emotional detachment.

Encourages reflection

Storytelling creates space for professionals to reflect on their own moral compass, and their personal values and practice in relation to other groups (Hardy, 2008; Haines and Livesley, 2008; East and colleagues, 2010; Haigh and Hardy, 2011). 'Telling tales' (Haines and Livesley, 2008), a storytelling module developed by two lecturers to explore communication among different professional groups in relation to safeguarding children, was employed to encourage reflection on their own and other's values and perspectives. 'Telling tales' centred around real-life reflections of a children's nurse who worked with a young boy. What the story highlighted was the different perspectives of both the nurses and social workers towards the boy's situation, and how the meanings implied in the language of one of the groups conflicted with the other. It provided students with an opportunity to reflect on their preconceived assumptions of the nurses and social workers, and to begin to develop shared understandings. This was deemed essential to integrated practice, and key to interprofessional working.

Is open to many truths

Story has the ability to create and communicate many personal truths and not just one objective truth (Reissman, 2000; Bailey and Tilley, 2002). Schwandt (2000) argues that knowledge is something that human beings don't find or access, but create. This is based on the philosophy that knowledge is not predefined or 'out there', but continually changing in light of new experiences and influenced by, for example, shared understandings, culture and language. Denning (2000) asserts that the power of story to bring about change comes not from the story itself but from the reactions that it creates in the minds of the listeners. Stories, therefore, are fluid - interpretations that can change depending on the cultural, social and personal circumstances in which they are told and retold by others. They create spaces for readers or listeners to make their own judgements and own meanings, to adopt an open mindset, rather than accepting them as true, accurate accounts of reality (Koch, 1998; Polkinghorne, 2007).

Represents individual and shared realities

Stories 'convey values and emotions and can reveal the differences and similarities between people's experiences' (East and colleagues, 2010, p17). Where storytelling can elucidate personal life events and their meanings, it can also serve to reveal something about both conflicting and shared social and political understandings, for example around subjects such as gender, race and disability (Riessman, 2000). According to Little and Froggett (2009), 'storytelling has the potential to gain access to the complexity of both individual and shared realities in a way other methods struggle to achieve' (p470). It advocates a participative democracy, aspiring to give voice to marginalised or excluded groups, and provides opportunities to challenge or champion commonly held assumptions and beliefs. Examples of this in practice have been documented - cultural diversity (Luwisch, 2001); racism ( Bell, 2010); disability (French and Swain, 2006); and mental health (Altenberger and Mackay, 2008).

Aids learning and development

In the words of Mckee and Fryer (2002), 'Stories are how we remember, we tend to forget lists and bullet points' (p2). For many of the reasons already discussed, it is evident that storytelling develops important skills and encourages good practice. Storytelling also facilitates a more informal way to learn than traditional teaching methods and is less analytical in its approach. Swap and colleagues (2001) distinguish experiential learning from that of being taught - learning by experiencing something uses a different part of memory than learning by teaching. The crux of the authors' argument is that memories rooted in personal experience are easier to retrieve, so the knowledge sticks and can be applied more readily to practice. The fact that personal stories are grounded in real-life or hypothetically real events, also makes them easier to identify with and locate in memory.

Why storytelling is valuable to the storyteller

Reframes self-identity and encourages personal development

Evidence suggests that the process of personal storytelling enables the concept of self and the life story to connect in a way that facilitates a reframing of identity and encourages personal growth (Roberts, 2000; McLean and colleagues, 2007; Altenberger and Mackay, 2008; Charon, 2009; Scottish Recovery Network, 2012). On imparting a story, an individual expresses the significant events in their own words and in their own time, and is empowered to reflect. The process enables new awareness and new meanings of the self to emerge. These are in most cases, positive new meanings that reformulate the teller's sense of self and helps them move beyond the 'illness' that has defined them. McLean and colleagues (2007) assert that telling negative stories is deemed a more powerful catalyst for creating positive perceptions of self - that reflecting on the detail of a disruptive life event helps shape self-identity much more effectively than a positive story, which more commonly serves to entertain or educate.

Is a relationship that co-produces meaning

The nature of the relationship between teller and listener is key to the outcome of the storytelling process (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; Davison, Bailey and Tilley, 2002; Gaydos, 2005; Polkinghorne, 2007; Cross, 2009). According to Riessman and Quinney (2005) 'participatory practice that is empowering for clients depends on relationships - a hallmark of social work and narrative' (p395). The storytelling relationship involves a listening and engagement that is different to that of a performer-audience or interviewer-participant. It is a relationship that bridges the divide between the person and those providing support, eg practitioner-service user (Charon, 2009). Gaydos (2005), in relation to nurse-patient relationships, elaborates on a four-step approach: engagement, mutuality, movement and new form. In summary, these four elements involve both parties agreeing to nurture trust, respect, care and empathy in the storytelling relationship, and together create a safe space for reflection, which enables new meanings to emerge.

Promotes resilience

Resilience involves a willingness to turn negative emotions involved in disruptive life events into something strengthening and empowering. East and colleagues (2010) argue that resilience is developed by a process of reflection on meanings, which enables emotional insights. The support of peer and other networks is key to forming bonds and feeling connected to other people. The combination of these factors results in a strength in people, which is based on the premise that life experiences (including negative experiences) offer opportunities for personal growth. This is reflected in the storytelling work of the Scottish Recovery Network around 'recovery' - recovery defined as 'being able to live a meaningful and satisfying life, as defined by each person, in the presence or absence of symptoms' (Scottish Recovery Network, 2006, p1).

Is therapeutic

The therapeutic value of telling a story is often reported in storytelling work (Hardy, 2007; Scottish Recovery Network, 2012). While concern for individuals' well-being in storytelling is often expressed and some tellers have reported a degree of upset in relaying their story, it is recognised that, for the most part, the positives of telling their story far outweigh any emotional distress encountered. It is more often that the act of telling a story and reflecting on it has a cathartic effect and is a catalyst to recovery.

Potential pitfalls of storytelling

The following points are worth considering when creating or using stories.

Subjectivity

Storytelling that aims to voice a collective opinion on social and political issues can run the risk of producing biased results that are based on the views of a select number of individuals, excluding and marginalising 'other' voices. Stories should be used to give voice and to allow for contrasting voices to be heard rather than a representative one. The subjective nature of storytelling also means that people listening may or may not identify or connect with people's stories. A story can disengage a listener if they don't identify with the person and subject matter, or potentially trigger an extreme emotional reaction. This needs to be handled sensitively in workplace education and training.

Ethical considerations

In respect of ethics in storytelling, Josselson (2007) says that it '...is not a matter of abstractly correct behaviour but of responsibility in human relationship' (p538). While, for the most part, those eliciting stories as part of their practice give due consideration to ethical issues (the role of teller, anonymity, who 'owns' the story), Josselson argues that the agreement (contract) should not only focus on informed consent, but also on the relationship between teller and listener. While the explicit agreement details the objective of the storytelling - who will do what, what will be achieved and how the story will be shared, there is also a need to be aware of, and consider, an implicit part which focuses attention and value on the relationship - one that is based on reciprocal trust, rapport, empathy and emotional responsiveness.

Power relationships

Storytellers expressing their stories in a professional context may, for personal reasons, omit details of a story, exaggerate it or even make some of it up. This can be influenced by the role of the listener - whether they are distracted and indifferent or engaged and interested. McLean and colleagues (2007) argue the importance of responsive listening, not only in determining what a person may disclose, but also in determining the outcomes for the teller. They also explain that the personality and the mental health of tellers can influence what will be disclosed and in what way.

The potentially coercive nature of storytelling is also highlighted (Hardy, 2007). Individuals may feel their story is being used for propaganda - to push a specific message to the community, and perhaps even victimise them, which is not an accurate reflection of their experience. The power wielded or relinquished between teller and listener in the storytelling process can, therefore, potentially skew validity and/or blur the truth of the story, and empower or disempower either party in the relationship.

Can be demoralising

It is evidenced in the mental health field that there are negative repercussions for some individuals who don't manage to 'recover' as well as others who tell their stories (Scottish Recovery Network, 2012). While storytelling is, for the most part, a process that brings people closer together and facilitates personal growth, a happy outcome for one person can highlight the unfulfilled outcomes of another. This can leave a person feeling isolated, stuck and demoralised.

Is a word based communication

Personal story is largely concerned with communicating in words and that can restrict people who have communication difficulties such as lack of speech, multiple disabilities, withdrawal and mental health problems. It is important that individuals have their voices heard in whatever way that works for them. Assistive technology and other storytelling techniques, such as visual and photo-based have been employed. Examples of using assistive technology and visual techniques with young people are documented by Waller and Black (2012) and Drew and colleagues (2010) respectively.

Is there a place for storytelling in social services?

There is an onus on services and supports to work in partnership with individuals to achieve outcomes. Self-directed support and the integration of health and social care highlight the need for services to ensure the person is at the centre of care and support. It can be argued that a person-centred, co-productive approach to support is more readily attainable given a fuller picture, and understanding of, a person's life. Findings from research conducted on what service users want from practitioners highlighted the importance of: relationships based on warmth, empathy, reliability and respect; seeing people's lives in the round and not just their problems; practical as well as emotional support; and listening. Listening was cited as the first step towards practice based on co-production (Beresford, 2012). If these findings serve as an accurate indicator of what is desired by, and can achieve change for service users, it can be argued that a potential role emerges for story in assisting practitioners, and those being supported, to work together to achieve outcomes and ultimately improve lives.

As well as facilitating the achievement of personal outcomes, there is a role for storytelling in developing awareness and knowledge around policy - how it impacts on people, and how it can be influenced or changed. The following case studies from health and mental health contexts, provide evidence for use of storytelling in influencing practice, policy and improving people's lives.

1. Patient Voices - journey from story to service redesign

The creation and use of digital stories, through careful facilitation, offers patients and providers the opportunity to grasp and transform their experiences and, in so doing, participate more fully in the community, learning from peers and colleagues rather than from 'experts'.' (Hardy, 2007, p48)

The Patient Voices digital stories programme (Hardy, 2007) was about bringing storytelling and new technology together to discover how it can open up dialogue to improve patient care, promote interprofessional working and, ultimately, result in service redesign. Initiated in 2003, the programme aimed to influence policy as well as practice, show how stories can provide qualitative feedback on the personal realities of care and provide service user led insight into the quality of care. Many of the 100+ video stories created in the programme have been used in health and social care education and at strategic management level in the NHS.

Professionals, carers and patients offered to share their stories in their own words, and provided their own photographs and music of choice. NHS staff and students who listened to the video stories spoke of the power in their honesty, simplicity, brevity and memorableness, and their ability to communicate messages succinctly.

The storytelling contributed to practice by:

Placing the person at heart of care

Developing empathy

Encouraging reflection

Placing value on relationships in providing care

Promoting learning and development

The journey from story to service improvement

↓ Stories

Giving people the opportunity to tell their stories enabled listeners/viewers to reflect and enter into dialogue and discussions on meanings for them and those they care for

↓ Reflection

↓ Dialogue

Reflection and discussion led to empathy and understanding of the person - places them at centre of care and support

↓ Person at centre

It was realised that the person is an integral part of the interprofessional education process rather than someone being studied

↓ Interprofessional education

↓ Individual changes

Individual changes in practice were encouraged not only through interprofessional education but due to the person being placed at the centre of care

↓ Organisational change

Service improvement

Individual changes led to collective changes which contributed to overall service improvement

Adapted from Hardy, 2007
View the stories
2. Personal narratives - journey from story to 'recovery'

Scottish Government funded research, conducted at Robert Gordon University (Altenberger and Mackay, 2008) and supported by Scottish Recovery Network and See Me Scotland, reveals how personal stories are used in the promotion of recovery and social inclusion by mental health users in Scotland. It involved individuals either recovered or in the process of recovery, sharing their own personal accounts of lived experience. Five purposes of telling personal stories were highlighted:

Promoting recovery - stories inspire hope and contribute to people taking control over their own recovery.

Promoting mental health awareness - storytelling is good at highlighting social issues that have something to say about the importance of mental well-being.

Countering stigma - storytelling can challenge assumptions and beliefs rooted in stereotypes.

Experts through lived experience - people who tell their stories are themselves 'experts', which breaks down the barriers between clinician/patient.

Personal learning and development - telling and sharing stories develops skills and is a tool for personal growth. For example, some storytellers went on to speak at conferences, joined peer support groups and completed training courses.

Implications for practitioners

Listening to, understanding and empathising with individuals is an integral part of practice and underpins the service user-practitioner relationship. A focus on what experiences mean for a person, rather than on a clinical analysis of their situation, encourages a person-centred approach and a shift away from form filling exercises to seeing the person in the round.

Hearing stories allows practitioners to reflect on their own practice, their judgements and facilitate better interprofessional working. It should be part of everyday practice, but can also be incorporated in practice learning and development. Practitioners should be encouraged to share how they work with individuals through story.

The different ways to tell stories should be considered in practice, especially with those who may have communication difficulties or multiple impairments.

The emotional nature of stories may trigger different responses in practitioners. These may vary from extreme to indifferent.

Changes at practice level can influence whole service improvement. This is especially true in respect of interprofessional working.

While storytelling is for the most part, a positive, therapeutic and cathartic experience for tellers, and the person is empowered to be an 'expert in their condition', due consideration needs to be given to the emotional effects on the person, the relationship in the storytelling process and ethics (especially when producing stories to share more widely).

Conclusion

Personal storytelling is shown to impact positively on practice, and influence better services and better outcomes for individuals. Iriss has created a storybank, which includes practical guides and examples of storytelling projects to aid practitioners use and produce stories effectively.
Iriss storybank
References

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Acknowledgements

This Insight was reviewed by Prue Thimbleby (Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Healthboard in partnership with University of Wales Trinity St David), Beth Cross (University of West of Scotland), Jim Elder-Woodward OBE, Clare Bannister-Phillips (Dumfries and Galloway Council), Gordon Watt and colleagues (Scottish Government), Neil Macleod (SSSC) and Helen Allbutt (NES). Iriss would like to thank the reviewers for taking the time to read and comment on this Insight.

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The role of personal storytelling in practice

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Key points Storytelling influences change at individual practice as well as organisational level Listening to stories facilitates better person-centred care and can lead to improved services Hearing personal stories engenders greater understanding, empathy and reflection Rapport, trust and care can be nurtured in practitioner-service user relationships through storytelling Personal storytelling benefits the teller as it can empower, encou

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closing the gap between what we know and what we do

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What follows is a direct transcription of the audio recording, made by Iriss specifically to assist people with hearing difficulties. Because of the differences between spoken and written English, the transcript may contain quirks of grammar and syntax.

IRISS : SAIA - Jonathan Sher. Putting the baby IN the bathwater

I came here from the States, specifically from North Carolina, and I can talk like this all the live long day if it would amuse and please you, but it's not actually how I talk, so I will just sort of go with what I know and lapse into it every once in a while if it would please you. But in North Carolina, I had the pleasure of being Chief Executive of an organisation which was called the North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute, and part of what we did was to create a coalition of organisations called, 'the Covenant with North Carolina's Children.'

One of the things that we worked on for years, and it's one of those stories where it took 5 years to become an overnight success, was facing a dilemma in the 21st century in the wealthiest nation of the world, in which there were, in just this one state, more than 130,000 children who couldn't go to the doctor, couldn't get preventative care, couldn't get regular treatment, they had to be at the point of life and death in order to get medical care, which they could then get through an A&E at a hospital.

Their parents were, what is called in the States, and I am sorry to say I increasingly see the term here, 'the working poor'. They were employed, but under the American system, they didn't earn enough to buy private health insurance and there is no obligation for employers to provide health insurance and the government doesn't provide a universal health service. And so there were 130,000 children who weren't getting the medical care that they needed, let alone the psychological and social and other kinds of care that they needed.

And so we spent these years organising, working together for that one goal of figuring out what to do to help those particular children, and after years, and after a collective effort, we did get the governor of the State to call a specialist session of the legislature that had only one item on the agenda, which was to create the children's health insurance programme. Within the year, again through an enormous collective effort, which reminds me in some ways of the kind of community effort that's been happening around the [Scottish] referendum on both sides, it wasn't about politicians and it wasn't about only professionals, it was about everybody helping to get kids signed up to get the care they needed. And they did, virtually everybody, every child who wasn't being covered is now covered.

Within the first year of this programme operating, there were 10,000 ... more than 10,000 children in North Carolina, in the 21st century, in the wealthiest nation in the world, who were able to get their first pair of prescription eye glasses, there were more than 1000 children in this one state who were able to get their first hearing aid: why weren't they doing well in school, was it because of the sort of whole language versus other methods of teaching language acquisition? I don't think so. I think the problem was that they couldn't see and they couldn't hear and they didn't have the medical conditions that they brought to school that they brought to their lives dealt with. And so those were being dealt with.

And one way of looking at that is that that was a real triumph. On the other hand, it's also accurate to say that it is disgraceful that in the richest country in the world, in the 21st century, there could have been 10,000 children who needed eye glasses and had no way of getting them and more than 1000 children who needed a hearing aid and couldn't get it. And I say that by way of reminding you that there are differences and coming from a place that doesn't have an NHS, that doesn't have a universal service like that and like some of the others that exist here in Scotland, is the difference between night and day. There were lots of community clinics and there were lots of people trying in their own wee ways in their own back yards to try to help with health problems, but you couldn't ever patch together enough of these wee projects to add up to actually having something that's the equivalent of the NHS.

And so when I came to Scotland, and I use that as an example, because you couldn't find 10 children in Scotland who had no access whatsoever, under any circumstance, to a hearing aid or to eye glasses. That just is unthinkable here. And so when I came here, part of the reason why I came here is having fought against a continuing stream of not very good things, that are essentially born inequalities ... I mean if you are healthy and wealthy in the States, it is a fabulous place. But unfortunately for too many people, if you are not, it's not.

So part of the attraction of Scotland, for me, was that I see Scotland's glass as being more than half full, that there really are a lot of extraordinary things here that are good for people and especially good for children. Now I have been here long enough to know that neither the NHS, nor the children's hearing system are perfect, but again trust me, the difference between thinking about children in the way that Kilbrandon did and in the way that informs the children's hearing system, is the other side of the planet, literally, from a system that's known in the States as the 'Conveyor Belt from Cradle to Prison'. And has resulted in the United States unfortunately having the highest rate of incarcerated people anywhere in the world.

There are more than 1 million people in prison in the States. This is not something to be proud of and one of the reasons that's not true here is that - well there are a lot of reasons why that's not true here - but one of them is to have a children's hearing system which starts from the premise, the children who do harm or who behave in ways which are not okay, are children who were very likely to have been harmed, or to have not been treated okay themselves. And that you have to understand them first and foremost as children who are people with needs as well as people defined by their deeds.

And it is a wonderful thing. So I am kind of belabouring the point this morning because there already is an enormous amount upon which to build in Scotland, which is wonderful, it can be better, I live in the real Scotland, not in Brigadoon, but the glass is more than half full. And your organisation is another example for me of that. The whole emphasis on attachment is not only laudable in some general sense, but day in and day out, makes a real difference in the real lives of real children, and the better we understand and act upon it, the more we do attachment in action to provide that kind of positive secure attachment. We are doing an extraordinarily wonderful thing in the world and that's true, no matter what the constitutional arrangement is, it's a wonderful thing to be doing.

I am not an expert on attachment, I am not a psychologist, this is not my own academic field of research, I know a wee bit about it, my guess is that many of you know more than me and some of you will know a lot more than me, so I wouldn't presume to tell you about things that you already know better than I could explain them to you.

The reason I accepted the invitation, and I hope it's the reason that it was extended to me, is that I do know a wee bit about a few other things that are related. And the two that I want to particularly focus on are the issue of prevention and the issue of the small p, politics of making a difference. Since I have already talked about the Covenant with North Carolina's Children, I will start with the small p, politics. Because one of the things that is true here and true in every country I have ever worked in, is that there is a gap between what some people know are good things to have happening, what the aspirations are and what's really happening. And that gap between our aspirations and our realities, that gap between what we know and what we do is a problem, it's a problem here, it's a problem everywhere. But it's not a problem that cannot be solved. And one of the keys to solving it is to work together to engage in collective action.

Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something, and I think once you take seriously that as a political principle, that this isn't all down to you, or you, or you, or me, to make something happen, that we all have a contribution to make - however large or small, however local or regional or national, however confined to a particular neighbourhood, or more broadly in the community around you - that has a cumulative impact taking those small actions that make a difference. They add up to something that's absolutely crucial.

Paul was very kind to say that the coalition that's developed around 'putting the baby in the bath water', has been guided by me. Frankly I wish. It's just not true. The reason why that has made a difference, and I will explain what the difference that it's made, is not because of what I have done, but because of what we have done, what this collective group of more than 80 signatories, and growing all the time ... one of the things that I am terribly proud of is that in the year we have been a coalition, no-one has left, and people keep joining, up until ... there were new people joining last week, new organisations and new distinguished individuals.

I am old enough, so that I have learned over and over again, that government officials and politicians have no problem whatsoever in saying no to me. I may have a wonderful argument, I may know a lot about X or Y or Z, but that doesn't mean that because I say something which I know to be true based on my own experience or based on the research, that everybody is just going to do it. Saying no to me, or saying no to WAVE Trust, which is just a wee charity that most of you would have never even heard of before, it's not hard, nobody finds that difficult. But all of a sudden when you show up together with 6 royal colleges and your organisation and most of the children's charities, and a sort of A list of - well who are the Scottish experts on things related to early years? - all of a sudden it's a lot harder to say No to all of us than it is to say No to any one of us.

And so I am delighted that Scottish Attachment Interaction is part of this coalition, because it magnifies your own power and creates, by you being part of it, it adds to the power of the whole group. That's how the real life of politics works, is people who are the decision makers, whether it's civil servants or elected politicians, are influenced by groups of people giving a clear consistent message to them, and the one that has to do with attachment, and the reason for bringing this all up today, is that there was ... as most of you will have known, the most important piece of children's legislation introduced earlier in this session, that was called the 'Children and Young People Bill.'

It's the most significant piece of children's legislation since devolution. And when it first came out, it was accompanied by something called a 'Policy Memorandum'. A policy memorandum is the government making its case about what this is for, why it should be done, it gives the reasons and the justification for what's in the bill. The Policy Memorandum, I have to say, credit where credit is due, was pretty wonderful. When you read through it, you know I was reading through it, and if you will excuse my North Carolina, I was going, 'Amen, Amen, yes', you know there was a lot of really good rhetoric in there, fine aspirations, good knowledge, it had a lot to say about how important it is to prevent harm, rather than simply intervene after the fact, although that's always important. It had a lot to say about how important the very earliest years of life are, and I was delighted to read it, and then I read the actual legislation. Wait a minute: what happened to all of that argument about the importance of prevention, what happened to the importance of the earliest years of life? It simply wasn't there. And as I have learned to say in Scotland, 'that's no right!', and it's not.

Happily, I wasn't the only person who had that reaction to it. A fair number of colleagues, individual colleagues and organisations read it and had the same reaction: that there's this most curious gap, between why this legislation is happening and what the legislation actually says. More happily still, we actually decided to talk with each other about it and have some discussions to see if there was common ground we could agree on, and that's one of the things that I have found over the decades, is the secret of successfully organising politically.

We started with 2 basic premises, 1 is that everybody involved check their ego and their agenda at the door, this isn't an opportunity to show off, everybody has got those opportunities, who needs it, it doesn't help. Second thing is that we only tried to find the areas on which we agreed, because being clever people and clever organisations, we could always find things to disagree about, inevitably, and in all kinds of areas. And so we said, right, take that as a given, there are going to be things we disagree about. What do we all share? Where is the common ground? What can we all agree on? And that's what's worked well with the North Carolina organisation? (which is still around and going strong). And it's what has worked thus far with putting the baby IN the bath water. In other words, putting back into the legislation what the government itself said was truly important. You know there's nothing here about disagreeing with the government, it's all about saying, you know you were right, why don't we actually do it, and so that's where the common ground was created.

Three things have happened as a result of the coalitions work on this, and I do feel great pleasure and pride to have been part of this collective effort, and it has been a collective effort. The first is that when the bill was passed, there is now in the Children and Young People Act, which passed in the Spring of this year, got Royal Assent in the spring of this year, there is now a provision that says that prevention has to be part of all children services planning. Up until this time, prevention was on the nice to do list. Trust me there's no coalition of people who are against prevention, there's nobody lobbying to say, no, no, no, please don't prevent the harm: you know that doesn't happen. But there doesn't have to be a coalition in favour of not preventing, for prevention to fail to happen. And so what has happened is that now prevention is part of the 'have to do' list, not just the 'nice to do' list. It's not just a good idea, it's the law, and we are very hopeful that that will make a difference in how health boards and local authorities and community planning partnerships approach the whole issue of children's services, because there's now a statutory duty and an obligation to make prevention a part of every plan.

The second thing that happened is that there was a part of the original bill that was called 'Counselling Services to Parents of Looked After Children'. Let me say that's a good idea, you know if ... I know that there are some parents of looked after children in the room, and for those of you who want and need counselling, that absolutely ought to be available, helpful, a good thing. But it wasn't about prevention and it wasn't early enough. And so the way the legislation now reads, because of the work of putting the baby in the bath water, because of that coalition, is it now says ... 'relevant services to parents of children at risk of becoming looked after from pregnancy, etc'. It's much broader in who is covers, in what it covers. And again this isn't just a sort of chit chat memo or a guideline which says, wouldn't it be wonderful and wouldn't it just be good practice to do this. It is now part of the law, which says there have to now be relevant services of a variety, from pregnancy, that will help to prevent children from the need to be looked after in the first place.

So those are the 2 things which were actually in the bill. There were a number of other things that we went for as a coalition and they didn't happen, but in almost all cases when they didn't happen, the minister said, 'well, we agree with the policy intent of this' - which well they should: it was in their policy memorandum; hard to argue with yourself - 'but we will deal with this later. It doesn't need to be in the legislation itself, we will deal with it through regulation and statutory guidance and other policy things'.

And there was a ministerial commitment to work with our coalition, which includes SAIA, in the development of the statutory guidance of the different elements which will lead to implementation, and so even though the Act has passed, the coalition's work is not over, because words on paper, words in an Act don't mean they are going to happen in the real world. The next stage is making sure that the regulations and guidance and all the other stuff that government does is right, and isn't just trivialised or sloughed off into some corner. And so we are part of that, and it's the WE that made that happen, not the ME.

Those are all goods things and one of the other things we pushed for was, they are going to be adding 500 new health visitors, which was one of the things we called for collectively. You know that actually was 2 coalitions working together, ours combined with the one led by the Royal College of Nursing. So this is not abstract, this is not intangible blah, blah, blah, this is about changing what government has to do and in a time of financial constraint, which we are in, and will continue to be in, it's really important. At local government level there is an awful lot of attention to paid to what's on the 'have to do' list, and if you are not on the 'have to do' list, chances are good that enough if people like the idea, believe in the concept, things it's a good thing, if they don't have to do it, the resources are going to go to what they have to do. And those 2 things are now on the have to do list. So I regard that as a big accomplishment. So if you didn't know that you were part of that accomplishment, you just pat yourselves on the back, because that's a good thing to have had happen, and we are going to continue to stick with this until it is actually implemented in real life, in real communities and makes a difference in children's lives, because otherwise it's just a futile effort. And so one of the other laws of coalitions, is that they need to stay together and be strong together until the job is done, and understand that the job is not done with words on paper. The job is done when children's lives and parents health and wellbeing are actually changed for the better.

Now, the second thing I wanted to talk to you about is prevention. Wave Trust is just a tiny charity. Our whole reason for being is to focus on the prevention side. Specifically our interest is on the prevention of child maltreatment, because years of research, looking at the best available evidence from around the world, kept coming back to 2 conclusions. One was that the root cause of most of our social ills can be found in child maltreatment, in what happens during those first thousand and one days of life, from pre-birth to pre-school. What I can tell you for sure and what the research absolutely documents, all over the world in all kinds of ways, is that what happens in early childhood never just stays in early childhood. That what happens during those crucial one thousand and one days continues to shape or misshape, continues to inform or misinform what we think, how we are wired, what our stress levels are, how we see the world, how we react to the world, throughout our lives, in ways large and small, in ways we can understand and in other ways which are largely imperceptible to ourselves, but which are no less powerful in influencing our lives. We need to get that right, but we are not set up as a society to get that right.

In Scotland today, and in the rest of the UK and in the States, and in most other places around the world, the emphasis for perfectly understandable reasons is to wait around until children are harmed and then to respond. The effort in child protection, the effort of our systems is to try to be ever better, ever quicker, ever more effective at reacting after a child has been harmed. You are probably the last group of people in the world who I need to say this to, but that's a very good thing. If a child has in fact been harmed, we owe that child, as a society, our very best, quickest, most effective efforts to stop the harm, to start the healing, to do what we can do to improve that child's life and circumstances that is absolutely a good thing to do. It's just not the only thing to do.

And what we are missing is a correct balance between reaction and prevention, because I don't know anybody who I have ever worked with, who is in the reaction, the responding world, and I would be surprised if there was anybody in this room who didn't believe it was better if the harm had never happened in the first place. If the harm had been prevented. So that we are not lining up to try to fix children who have been harmed, but to make sure they have never been harmed in the first place. That's not where the investment is. We had some influence with the Scottish Parliament's Finance Committee, in coming out in their enquiry in preventative spending, and preventative spending is now officially the policy of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, and that's a crucial good step in the right direction, but it's another perfect example of it's not enough to say it, you have to actually do it. And the investment hasn't been there, the resources haven't shift, human and financial, to make that happen.

Some of you will have heard of something called the Christie Commission, here in Scotland, a very few years ago. And to make a very long story very short, one of their findings was that right now, 40% of public spending in Scotland goes to fixing problems and cleaning up messes that could have been prevented. Now think about that for a minute, 40% of the whole public budget. It doesn't take 40% to do the prevention side, it takes a tiny fraction of that, but if you do the prevention side, you don't have to spend the money on the clean up effort, on the fixing effort, because the problem was stopped before it ever started. And so our work is about how you do that, and attachment is an absolutely crucial part of this, promoting secure, positive attachment, and trying wherever possible to prevent especially disorganised attachment, which affects about 15% of the population and is incredibly damaging in their lives and there is a big connection between disorganised attachment and child maltreatment. Maltreatment meaning abuse, neglect, living with domestic violence. And the children for whom disorganised attachment is a reality, are the ones most likely to need to be looked after, to end up having damaged lives, to end up needing extra resources spent to them, whether it's through the education system, the health system or the criminal justice system.

Attachment, I think, has grown as a field, because it wasn't very many decades ago, in fact it wasn't even a decade ago, when anybody, well almost anybody, talked about attachment, what they meant was the psychiatric condition of attachment, or the lack of attachment which had gone horribly wrong and was to the point of it being a clinical psychiatric problem. Now, we are slowly but surely moving toward a much better day in which we are figuring out that the best thing to do is to promote health, to promote wellness, to promote good attachment, so that we are not waiting around until it happens and correcting it, we are making sure that the people understand and know and can do the things they can do, to help make positive attachment a reality.

Who could be more important than those of you gathered in this room, to that happening, you get this. The question and the challenge that I am going to leave with you is essentially you know all of this, and you also know that it isn't happening as fully and well as universally and powerfully as it could and should in the world. Why is that and what can we collectively and individually do about that?

But we still live in a world that doesn't get attachment, that doesn't get it, especially in the terminology that's medicalised and highly professionalised and therefore inaccessible to a lot of people who very much need to get it, understand it, know how to do it.

So how do we go about that task, how do we take the knowledge that you all have, how do we take your understanding, your passion, your professionalism, your caring, and make sure that that becomes something which spreads?

It seems to me that that the whole idea of, on the one hand preventing child maltreatment, is that we believe that it is entirely feasible to reduce child maltreatment by at least 70% by the year 2030, and we call that the '70/30 initiative'. Which is a call for an all hands on deck effort. For the kinds of discussions that have been happening around the referendum, to move into the positive world of a conversation about, well, how do we actually make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up, what do we actually do? We all agreed to the aspiration. There's complete cross party support for Scotland being the best place to grow up. But how do we do it, how do we make that actually happen?

And it seems to me that you guys are in a privileged and powerful position, individually and collectively, to be part of that solution, because the way of getting rid of child maltreatment, of abuse and neglect and growing up with domestic violence is not just to keep exposing its horrors: there's been plenty of that. We all get that child maltreatment is a terrible thing, what we need to do now is to shift to the positive side and the way we talk about that is that we need to together seek 4 goals.
1. Every baby nurtured, both emotionally nurtured and physically nurtured,
2. every child thriving,
3. every parent prepared and
4. every parent supported.

And if we lived in a world in which every baby was nurtured, every child was thriving, every parent was prepared and supported, child maltreatment would drop like the proverbial stone. The number of children who would need to be looked after would decline dramatically and we would be so much better off as communities, as families, as individuals, as an economy, were that to happen. And the way to get there is by doing what each of us can do positively, toward any of those 4 things. What you can do as an association, what you can do as an individual, what we can do collectively to make it happen in a thousand different little ways that all add up to being something extraordinary.

And there are precedents for this, there are big public health precedents for it, like the fact that it wasn't very long ago, it was within our lifetimes that there were 350,000 people every year who developed smallpox: last year nobody developed smallpox, in the world. It was not a million years ago when cholera epidemics were part of life on this island. Not any more. The steps that have been taken through an amazing number of collective actions. And even on the not so clinical - this is just a jab in the back seat - but on the social side the same is true, when I first started coming to Scotland, which was in the 1970s, if somebody had said, 'oh well, in your lifetime, in the day, Scotland is going to have no smoking in pubs or clubs or anywhere indoors; it's like 'aye, right'. You'd have been laughed out of the place ... And yet, here we are, and that happened. 25 years ago, how many of you were recycling or dealing with alternative energy or doing something to make this a greener planet? Not me for sure. And not many other people. And yet now it's just part of what we all do. That didn't happen because of an injection and it didn't happen because a powerful person said you must do this, it's because we figured out that was a win, win situation that everybody benefitted, by us doing our part toward that common good.

The last one I will cite, just by way of encouragement, is that again, when I moved to Scotland, and certainly when I was first coming here, there was a real problem with drink driving. It's not that it doesn't exist any more, but the whole attitude toward it is completely different, and the incidence of it has dramatically declined.

These are things we can do. Spreading the word about the importance of attachment, so that it isn't just knowledge you have, but really putting it in action. Doing what we can do individually and collectively toward 'every baby nurtured, every child thriving, every parent prepared and supported' is within our grasp. And the way it's going to happen is not just by governments doing it (although governments have a crucial role to play) and not just by professionals doing it (although professionals have an important role to play), but by a genuine all hands on deck effort, in which everyone in this room and everyone in a thousand other rooms across Scotland, all say,

'you know, we want this for ourselves and for our children and for our communities and for our society, and this is something that we can accomplish.'

Note: The copyright of this transcript belongs to the speakers or speaker. It may not be copied or re-used without permission.

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Putting the baby IN the bathwater, why attachment matters for all

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What follows is a direct transcription of the audio recording, made by Iriss specifically to assist people with hearing difficulties. Because of the differences between spoken and written English, the transcript may contain quirks of grammar and syntax. IRISS : SAIA - Jonathan Sher.

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knowledge, skills, motivation or cultural problem?

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Quick! Design some elearning that has compelling activities and a real business impact!

How? Try action mapping.

I've been using a quick, visual process to design projects. I call it action mapping because it helps you change what people do, not just what they know. It helps you design action-packed materials that are 100% dedicated to improving business performance, and it can keep stakeholders from adding extraneous information.

Here's a slideshow with an overview. It uses lighthearted stock photos from 2008 of a guy dressed in a ninja outfit. No political statement is intended.
How does it work in the real world?
For me, the map fills three roles:

Design document

Outline (obviously non-linear; if someone wants a linear approach, I write a short, high-level text outline or move the nodes so they form a list on one side of the goal)

Content repository

The map is a content repository because I use Compendium, which lets you include PowerPoint slides, Word documents, and other files in the map. This means each information node actually contains the relevant source materials.

If you use a rapid tool, you could probably just dive into the tool after creating the map, using the map as an outline and tightening the source materials as you go.
Why use the map?
A tool like the action map makes everyone focus on the business reason for the project and keeps extraneous information out-it provides discipline.

Undisciplined communication is the third biggest source of harmful complexity in business, according to Bill Jensen in Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage.

Time pressure allows people to justify behaviors they would not accept from others....Communication becomes a matter of disseminating information and taking any available e-shortcuts. When it comes to communication, business is facing major discipline and accountability problems.

Jensen says that communication becomes ineffective when we don't identify the deep problem that the communication is supposed to solve. Instead, we say, "Let's communicate more," which, according to Jensen, "just creates noise and distracts from the original problem."

How does this work at your organization? Do you have a design process that keeps everyone focused on the business goal for each elearning project? Or are you expected to include whatever information the stakeholders say you should include, and if so, how might you change this?

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Action mapping: Design lively elearning and training

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Quick! Design some elearning that has compelling activities and a real business impact! How? Try action mapping. I've been using a quick, visual process to design projects. I call it action mapping because it helps you change what people do, not just what they know.

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discussion v writing

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Knowledge can be transferred in two ways - by Connecting people so that they can discuss, and Collecting knowledge in written (explicit) form so others can find and read it (see blog posts on Connect and Collect).

Connecting people is far less efficient than Collecting while being far more effective - but how much more effective?

We can never be sure about the effectiveness of knowledge transfer without some good empirical studies, but there are 2 pointers towards the relative effectiveness of these two methods. These pointers are as follows;

The often repeated (and sometimes challenged) quote that "We Learn . .

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we discuss

80% of what we experience

95% of what we teach others."

David Snowden's principle that

We always know more than we can say, and

We will always say more than we can write down

Let's make two assumptions here, firstly that the percentages in the first list are correct, and secondly that we equate the "more than" in Snowden's principle to "twice as much as" (OK, this is entirely arbitrary, but I want to see what the consequences are).

With these assumptions, the effectiveness of the Connect route is as follows

I know (100%)

I say (50%)

You learn through discussion (50% x 70% = 35%)

The effectiveness of the Collect route is as follows

I know (100%)

I write (50% x 50% = 25%)

You learn through reading (25% x 10% = 2.5%)

Therefore transferring knowledge through Collecting is 14 times less effective than transferring knowledge through Connecting people.

If we change the proportions in Snowden's principle then we change this conclusion. If for example

we always know 3 times more than we can say, and we will always say 3 times more than we can write down, Collecting becomes 21 times less effective, and so on.

I know all these figures are arbitrary and inexact, but what we are looking at here is some sort of estimate of relative efficiencies.

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Why knowledge transfer through discussion is 14 times more effective than writing

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We can never be sure about the effectiveness of knowledge transfer without some good empirical studies, but there are 2 pointers towards the relative effectiveness of these two methods. These pointers are as follows; The often repeated (and sometimes challenged) quote that "We Learn . .

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"Social workers need the time and space to find, use and share research. That's difficult to do when you have so much work that you don't feel able to stop and think," says Gerry Nosowska, a former social worker and manager who now supports social workers to use evidence in practice. "We need a culture in our organisations that encourages and values social workers reading, discussing and reflecting."

It is not just social workers who need the time and resources to be able to base their decisions on evidence; people at all levels of social care, from policymakers and commissioners down to frontline staff, should be grounding their conclusions on solid, up-to-date research.

But, for various reasons, social care has struggled with developing a robust evidence base. A report from the National Audit Office last year stated that "compared with healthcare, evidence is weaker on which ways of commissioning and providing services are the most cost-effective". In a time of major cutbacks in council budgets, this matters; we need to be sure that the money we do have is being spent in the most effective ways.

More widely, the fact that social care has such an impact on people's lives means that service users and carers are entitled to practice that has, where possible, been shown to be the best. As the Social Care Institute for Excellence's report on developing a social care evidence base states: "Best informed practice should be the right of people whose long-term outcomes depend in part on social care decisions." Although this was written 10 years ago, it is still just as relevant today, and yet in her 2011 interim report on the child protection system, Professor Eileen Munro argued: "Few social workers have detailed training in any evidenced method and this seriously limits their ability to help children stay safely with their birth family."

Not enough research

One issue is that social care is the poor cousin of healthcare when it comes to research funding. "When you consider the amount of money that's invested in healthcare research, both government taxpayers' money, private sector money and charities, it's just a completely different level compared to social care," argues Mike Clark, research programme manager at LSE's School for Social Care Research.

Both the breadth and depth of social care research need to be improved; Clark says that, "In adult social care [compared to healthcare] we tend to see a smaller pool of researchers looking to do smaller scale research projects, with far fewer disciplines involved."

Former Liberal Democrat MP Paul Burstow, a former care minister, agrees that social care has a weaker evidence base than healthcare, giving the example of carers' services losing out on NHS investment due to "lack of evidence [for the services] of a standard that NHS commissioners will accept".

One way of solving this would be to give social care a lot more money - but that doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon. Clark suggests that, in areas which overlap with healthcare - such as mental health and older people's care - social care should tap into the existing healthcare research, and perhaps collaborate more with healthcare colleagues.

Dez Holmes, director of Research in Practice, argues that evidence must be construed more widely than just the results of randomised control trials: "We need to look at the evidence we've got in our practitioners, in our clients, in our children. There's a great deal of knowledge out there that we're not always harvesting as effectively as we could." Holmes also argues that social care is done a disservice by the "myth" that it is not evidence-based: "There are great numbers of social care researchers and social work researchers who are doing terrific work in this field."

Another key change is cultural. In healthcare, it is expected that GPs and surgeons stay up-to-date with the latest research, and even carry it out themselves. In social care, that is more the exception than the rule. Holmes says that, "We really, really need to enable our practitioners and our service leaders to build their confidence around research. It will be great if more high-quality research is funded, but it [is] equally important that the sector feels greater ownership over knowledge."

Putting evidence into practice

Once the research has been done, the challenge is getting it to practitioners. While access to research has improved in recent years, that is no guarantee that social workers and others on the frontline are actually using it. Holmes argues that, "We've got to think about our relationship with research, rather than let's give everyone Athens access, because it's not that simple."

The complexity of social care and social work means that there will never be simple ways for research to be translated into practice. Christina Plafky, research fellow in evidence informed practice at Oxford University, says: "Often practitioners are working with quite complicated family situations, making it difficult to draw on research that can be directly applied during the intervention, assessment and decision-making process." Practitioners must be allowed the space to exercise their initiative and professional judgement.

Again, the key change has to be cultural; for it to become the norm that practitioners are keeping on top of research and using it to inform their practice. Nosowska argues that leaders and managers have a key role to play in creating the kind of environment that encourages research: "Social workers should be supported to make judgements based on good evidence and then backed up when they do." In a recent Australian study, summarised by Clark for research website Social Care Elf, the authors concluded that "an overall organisational ethos and professional culture that value research have a bearing on the uptake of academic research among policy personnel."

Presenting research

Innovative methods to present evidence on the part of researchers may also encourage social care practitioners to become research informed. At York, the Social Policy Research Unit published the results of a study into how young people with physical disabilities manage personal budgets in the form of a short video These newer forms of presenting content can be more accessible for those without an academic background, and - particularly in the case of the interactive - allow you to pick out the parts that are relevant to you, rather than wading through 60 pages of dry text.

These innovations will be key to helping practitioners access research when under the twin pressures of heavy caseloads and limited resources - but they need to be supported by their organisations to do so. This is essential if social care is to develop a strong evidence base. And, as Holmes argues, "being evidence-informed isn't a luxury bolt on to working in social care. It is at the heart of delivering good quality social care."

This article was amended on 7 July 2015 to correct Christina Plafky's job title and the spelling of her name. It was also amended to correct the spelling of Dez Holmes' name.
Topics

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How good is the social care sector at building an evidence base?

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"Social workers need the time and space to find, use and share research. That's difficult to do when you have so much work that you don't feel able to stop and think," says Gerry Nosowska, a former social worker and manager who now supports social workers to use evidence in practice.

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This book by Common Craft founder Lee LeFever is a simple guide to turning complex ideas into easy-to-understand explanations. Learn the strategies that helped Common Craft become known around the world for effective explanations.

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scenario planning

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Imagining the Future of support and social services in 2025

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What does the future hold for social services in 2025?

Nobody knows for sure

It is impossible to predict the realities of 2025 because there are any number of social, political and economic factors that will impact on our trajectory over the coming decade.

However, if we have learned anything from the recent independence referendum it is that there is a strong appetite for change and a willingness for everyone to get involved in shaping Scotland's future. The relationships between decision makers, citizens and communities are being redefined and Scotland, as elsewhere in the UK, is firmly in the grip of a new and exciting debate about social justice, values, and community empowerment. All of which is hugely important in shaping of social services, care, welfare and community in the coming decade.

The Imagining the Future scenarios have been designed to help us think through some of these issues. It is a tool to get us discussing, arguing and debating the future of social services. They are provocative but also useful to guide difficult conversations around, for example, the role of professionals in 21st century, citizen rights and responsibilities, leadership and workforce planning.

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The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS)

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Imagining the Future - a creative exploration

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It is impossible to predict the realities of 2025 because there are any number of social, political and economic factors that will impact on our trajectory over the coming decade. However, if we have learned anything from the recent independence referendum it is that there is a strong appetite for change and a willingness for everyone to get involved in shaping Scotland's future.

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telling the story of desistance

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What can we learn from those former prisoners who have successfully "desisted" from criminal behaviour or "gone straight?" This film has been produced as part of a project to share knowledge and improve understanding about why people desist from offending.

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Using video to tell a story

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Digital storytelling - Liam's video CV

Liam's video CV demonstrates how someone with autism can use video to help others see beyond the disability
Transcript of video with Liam Robertson, 12th March 2012 Liam
Hello, I'm Liam Robertson. I was born in September 1991 and this is my story.

I attended Barrhead High School between 2003 to 2009 with additional support provided to me due to my autism.

This is my home in Eaglesham where I live with my Mum and Dad.

Here we are in my bedroom. As you can see of these posters, I am a big movie fan and my favourite activity is to go to the pictures with my friends and family. I also love the theatre, especially musicals and I go whenever possible.

I am a member of the Eaglesham Music and Drama Group.

During the week I go to the Columbia Social Club to attend the special needs social group and also attended the Rule Breakers, a young person's club in the Fairweather Halls in Newton Mearns.

While I'm at home I like to do some script writing on my laptop to create some screen plays or sketches for theatre, film and TV. Here are some of my storyboards.

I like going on Facebook a lot to chat with my friends and writing some posts about what I have been doing with the day. I also like playing with the PS2 and the Wii.

Here we are at Cosgrove Care's internet cafe, and this is where I used to work on a Friday while at school and college where I obtained my SVQ2 on Customer Services. While I was working there I was helping, serving customers, and generally cleaning up around the shop. I have taken part in a number of fundraising events on behalf of Cosgrove Care, including sponsored walk.

This is Barnardo's, a charity shop where we believe in children. I worked voluntary on a Wednesday afternoon. Generally I worked down in the basement checking donated items like children's puzzles to see if they are completed and tagging donations for sale in the main shop.

This is the Scottish Youth Theatre in Brunswick Street. I attend the drama workshops for 18 to 25 year olds on a Saturday. At these workshops we focus on the individual using performance to increase our confidence. It provides a safe environment for us young people to learn and express ourselves.

Indepen-dance is a company with whom I gained work experience. I worked at Woodside Halls last year while I was on my second year course of Learning for Work at Cardonald College. In Woodside Halls I registered people, joined in the group for some dancing and also I washed the cups and dishes during lunch.

I have re-applied for NQ Acting and Performance Course at Stow College this year. The reason why I didn't get into that course last July is because the course was full. But I have been given a provisional acceptance to attend starting in September 2012. My dream and aspiration is to be an actor or to work in the theatre.
Liam's Recital of a scene from Citizen Kane
A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think you remember. You take me, one day back in 1896 I was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry, and as we pulled out there was another ferry pulling in - and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on, she was carrying a white parcel. I only saw her for one second, she didn't see me at all, but I will bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

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Digital storytelling - Liam's video CV - Liam Robertson

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Liam Robertson is 20 years old and has autism. He has a passion for film and would like to pursue a career in the theatre. In this video Liam talks about his interests and aspirations, attending Scottish Youth Theatre and working in a Barnardo's shop, and he delivers a monologue from Citizen Kane.

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audio clip from Iriss.fm, below

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Personal Learning Networks.  Final version

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Jointly produced by IRISS and NHS Education for Scotland, this video animation explains how Kristina, a mental health practitioner, learning how to use social media to create a personal learning network.

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See http://content.iriss.org.uk/hospitaltohome for more on this project.