The Wales College

The 22 authorities in Wales have now signed up to the Wales College, a partnership withresearch in practicewhich was successfully launched on 8 October (2004) at Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales. The venture is a significant move towards embedding evidence-informed childcare practice in Wales. The College will run under the current agreement for three years. The All Wales Support Unit will play a supporting role for the College and the existing Heads of Children’s Service Forum fulfils the role of a Steering Group for this initiative, giving direction and guidance on the development of the partnership. Contact either Mike Thomas at the All Wales Support Unit - Mike.Thomas@swansea.gov.uk - or Elizabeth Cooke atresearch in practice- elizabeth@rip.org.uk.

Publications and Products for the Wales College

All 22 Local Authorities in Wales are members of the College and will be able to access a range of products including regular updates, research reviews and briefings (some bi-lingual), handbooks and CDs. The All Wales Support Group will handle the onward distribution of research-based materials provided by research in practice and provide the administration for the Development Groups.

What are the Welsh Development Groups? 

One of the first initiatives of the Wales College is to run a series of Development Groups. The aim is to engage enthusiastic professionals to work collaboratively together to increase the extent to which research evidence informs policy or practice decisions in their agency. There will be 3 parallel Development Groups each meeting over a period of about a year – one in North Wales, one in the South East and one in the South West.

The Development Groups will focus on finding and using evidence about family support. We recognise that this is a broad term that covers a variety of different activities and would like to note that we are not confining the groups to any one aspect of family support.

Each of the 22 authorities within the Wales College is invited to identify two staff to join one of these Development Groups. Collectively, these participants will work together over a year with facilitators from research in practice to explore, develop and produce learning from research evidence about family support. Participants will work on a focused project (that they will design) that will take an evidence-informed approach to an aspect of service development related to family support work in their agency.

The outcomes for participants will be:

• increased awareness about the range of relevant research in the family support field, and what it says

• better knowledge about how and where to find relevant research

• a greater understanding about different ways of implementing research

• a plan for service improvement / practice change that has been informed by research

• more confidence in how to evaluate the impact of improvements / changes on users.

The outcomes for local family support services will be service improvement based on the application or generation of research evidence about how to tackle a current problem or issue. In addition, participants will be supported to disseminate their learning more widely within their agency. The Welsh authorities will nominate applicants for the Development Groups. Two members of the research in practice staff (Rhiannon Hodson and Elizabeth Cooke) will lead and support the groups.

When and where will they meet?

The Development Groups will meet on a regional basis at a location in the north, the south east and south west of Wales. Local Authorities have been grouped as follows:

The next meetings of the groups will be as follows:

Administrative support is being provided by the:

All Wales Support Group

116, Eton Crescent

Uplands

Swansea

SAI 4QR

Mike.Thomas@swansea.gov.uk

Contact Elizabeth Cooke at research in practice for any further information about the Wales College: elizabeth@rip.org.uk tel: 01803 860095.