This document outlines a project between JRF/ASCC aimed at developing evidence-enriched practice in care services. It involves four strands of work including improving care homes and housing with care. The goal is to use evidence from research, practitioner experience, organizational knowledge, and service users to make improvements that enhance quality of life. The project will involve several agencies and local authorities in an action learning program to test using evidence to guide practice changes. It will examine how practitioners and organizations use evidence and identify enablers and barriers to applying research in practice.

1. JRF/ASCC ‘Simple but not simplistic –
developing evidence enriched practice’
project

2. JRF ‘A Better Life’ programme
Four strands of work:
• Care homes (My Home Life) – a
three year ‘voice, choice and
control’ project including
leadership programme for
managers
• Housing with care – three main
projects with a view to
supporting development of
seamless care (quality of life,
affordability, relationships)
• Alternative approaches – e.g.
housing co-ops, Shared Lives,
Homeshare, Debenham Project
• Vision and mission – what makes
a better life not just better
services – seven key challenges
http://www.jrf.org.uk/topic/betterlife
http://betterlife.jrf.org.uk/poem.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kda
dD6eSFQ4&feature=youtu.be

3. ASCC ‘Developing Evidence Enriched
Practice (DEEP)’ project
• Working with a number of national and local
agencies to explore the effective use of evidence in
practice
National agencies Local agencies
Social Services Improvement Agency Gwalia
Care Council for Wales Neath & Port Talbot
Care and Social Services Inspectorate
Wales
Bridgend County Borough Council
Older People’s Commissioner Carmarthenshire County Council
Age Cymru (My Home Life Cymru
programme)
Monmouthshire County Council

4. JRF/ASCC ‘Simple but not Simplistic’
project -what we want to achieve
• An action learning programme of service and
workforce development in each site using the
DEEP principles – focusing on topics that matter
to agencies and practitioners and using ‘A Better
Life’ and other evidence (see later)
• Find out how practitioners engage with evidence
and use it to develop their thinking and practice
• Find out how the organisations they work for can
support or undermine this

5. Some key principles behind the DEEP
approach

6. Working towards a better life for all –
creating an ‘enriched environment of
care and support’ (Nolan, 2006)
‘We should be not be talking about quality of life, but rather quality
of lives’ (Post, 2001)

7. Drawing on Appreciative Inquiry –
building on good practice, not picking
holes
• ‘Appreciative Inquiry is
the co-operative search
for the best in people,
their organisations, and
the world around them.
It involves systematic
discovery of what gives a
system “life” when it is
most effective and
capable’ (Cooperrider et
al. 2007)

8. Valuing stories – drawing on
Experience Based Co-Design (EBCD)
• ‘Life fills us with stories.
Stories fill us with life’
(Contact the Elderly
volunteer leaflet)
• ‘The most perfectly
designed treatment
pathway in the world
can still be a disaster
from an experience
point of view’ (Bate &
Robert, 2007 p22)

9. Bringing together four types of
evidence to make changes for the
better
There are at least four very
important sources of
evidence:
• Research
• Practitioner wisdom
• Organisational knowledge
• Lived experience and
‘voice’ of local older
people and carers

10. Giving power to the frontline
• ‘If people don't think
they have the power to
solve their problems,
they won't even think
about how to solve
them’. Saul Alinsky,
Rules for Radicals

11. It’s not all about big changes
• ‘Often it is the simple things
that bring the most
pleasure (and the lack of
them can bring a sense of
sadness and loss) and
services do not always seem
to be very good at
delivering ‘the ordinary’’.
(Blood, 2013 p13)
• We’d like to ‘think outside
the box’ – new ways of
working as well as how
existing service models can
be improved

12. Three things need to be right
• Frontline staff
engagement with
evidence (e.g.
understanding about
loneliness, human
rights approach to risk)
• Embedded systems (e.g.
forms and processes)
• Organisational culture
(e.g. valuing, permissive
and empowering)

13. Timetable – phase one
• January 31st – launch event in Cardiff
• March – a focus group with service users and
carers in each of the sites
• Early April – an all day learning event in each
of the sites
• Mid April to early May– phone interviews
with practitioners in each of the sites
• Late May – interim report

14. Timetable - phase two
• Early June to early November – six half day
action learning events in each site and two
rounds of telephone interviews with practitioners
– July and October
• Early December – an all day sharing experiences
event in Cardiff for reps from each of the sites
and a focus group with service users and carers in
each of the sites
• January to April – evaluation, project outputs
and national dissemination event(s)