European information sources for social care

1. European Information Sources for
Social Care
Julie Robinson
Project Information Officer
Social Care institute for Excellence

2. Overview
 Brief definitions – social care and SCIE
 The European social care resource
 Problems searching social care information
 Some possible solutions
 Over to you - questions and comments

3. What is social care?
“People who have physical or psychological
problems often require practical help coping
with the everyday business of living. Social
care workers provide this practical support.”
(Department of Health 2009).

4. Social care in numbers
 2.8 million people in the UK receive some
form of social care
 1.5 million people work in social care
 Over 36,000 employers
 Bigger than the NHS

5. What is the Social Care Institute for
Excellence?
 Independent Charity set up by Department of
Health in 2001
 SCIE identifies and disseminates the
knowledge base for good practice in all
aspects of social care throughout the United
Kingdom.
 www.scie.org.uk

6. The European social care resource
 Mind Map –clickable links to online
information sources
 Word document- describes and comments on
the information sources listed in the mind
map (plus URL)

7. Themes
 Principal academic centres
 Organisations
 Databases
 Portals
 Key journals

8. Resources selected
 Online
 Free
 English language
 Substantial
 Full text

9. Why searching social care literature
can be challenging...
 Diverse and widely spread over a range of
databases
 Grey or fugitive literature
 Language often vague and fast-changing
 US bias in the larger commercial databases

10. Good news- Social Care Online

11. Social Care Online
 UK's most extensive free database of social
care information
 subject coverage -very wide ranging
 over 110,000 abstracted records
 Grey literature
 UK is the main focus, but does include
information on many countries, especially
comparative studies, which include the UK.

12. Searching ideas
 Dig deeper
 Consider high level overviews
 Think Nordic
 Use national library catalogues
 Consider searching on journal title(s)

13. Contact details
Julie Robinson
julie.robinson@scie.org.uk