Fit for the Future

Six reasons why paying £12,500 for being a Partner in the research in practice network from September 2005 onwards will be good value for money

The principles enshrined in Every Child Matters and its associated legislation increase the urgency for agencies to:

• integrate their work to better support all children and families

• develop recruitment, training and retention policies and services that create an informed, confident and stable workforce

• make better and more transparent use of evidence

• to demonstrate commitment to being a 'learning organisation', and

• for each agency - together and separately - including elected members and trustees - to take responsibility for quality.

All this points to the services from research in practice being increasingly relevant and central to your business plans and service outcomes:

research in practice bridges the gap between practice and research with products, services, networking and links to national, including governmental, agencies, and we do more of this than any other available service. No other service is dedicated solely to children and families work.

The work of research in practice is centrally concerned with the adoption and implementation of research, not just dissemination. Our focus is on the most important, and hardest, task within evidence-informed developments.

1. We have been able to hold our fees at the same level for the last four years. Over our first eight years we were also able to secure additional external funding, so making every £4 of fee worth £5 of service. We intend this to be true over the next five years as well.
   
2. research in practice is valued as genuinely responsive to our Partner agencies' needs - involving you in planning the services, enabling you to take up new opportunities, and providing consistent support and encouragement for you to engage with the breadth of work needed to develop confident and competent workforces. The cumulative effect of our services and working methods assist agencies and individuals to think holistically, to be more evidence-informed than reactive - and so to be better positioned to respond positively to the modernisation agenda
   
3. Our costs compare very well with other services, such as external training or consultancy services. You can pay £20,000 or more for 10 days staff training. Other voluntary organisations are known to charge a consultancy fee of £800 a day. By contrast, research in practice offers a wide and diverse range of services for a single fee of £12,500.
   
4. We are well established nationally, are members of two ADCS committees, two research and development funding committees for major charitable trusts, as well as a range of advisory and editorial groups. In 2000 we were highlighted in the Quality Strategy for Social Care consultation paper (which led to the formation of SCIE) as a good example of collaborative evidence-informed working, and this year have been identified in the SCIE review of research utilisation as an example of a service supporting the 'organisational excellence' model. Our website is the most highly used of all sites delivering research-based information to those working with children and families at risk of social exclusion.

research in practice provides more than services - it also supports the largest and most active evidence-informed practice network in the country. For detail on the specifics of what is provided each year see our Workplan and our services

For more on research in practice's plans for the future please see our leaflet Fit for the Future : PDF: (new window) or order from ask@rip.org.uk