About Us - Keele University
humss banner

Keele Making Research Count

About Making Research Count

Making Research Count is a national collaborative research dissemination initiative, currently run by regional centres based in the universities of Bedfordshire, Brighton, East Anglia, Keele, King's College London, Salford, UCLAN, York and The Open University. This consortium of universities has a proven track record in social work and social care research as well as providing social work education at qualifying and post qualifying levels. These universities have formed partnerships with member agencies, to promote knowledge-based practice and improve services in social work, social care and their interface with health and education across Children's and Adult services.

Overall Aims of the Initiative

  • Develop collaborative partnerships between Universities and local authorities, the NHS, and other relevant bodies to establish knowledge based practice
  • Improve the dissemination and implementation of research and related findings
  • Increase mutual understanding between researchers and practitioners
  • Influence the shape of evidence based practice, through its contribution to the debates about appropriate research methodologies for the field of social care

Partnership with Agencies

Making Research Count aims to work in partnership with local authorities, the NHS, and other relevant bodies in regional sites to contribute to the development of research-informed, knowledge-based practice. This will bring together the best of practitioner knowledge and expertise, knowledge from research and information and expertise from service users.

Regional Approach

Each regional partnership is funded locally through agreed yearly membership fees and the regional programme is accountable to those local partnerships. A subscribing authority will be linked to one of the participating universities, normally the nearest regionally.

Each region has established a different, but complementary approach to developing knowledge-based practice by responding to the needs of the regional partners.

These partnerships have a range of objectives:

  • Disseminating research and related findings
  • Applying research awareness to service development
  • Involving managers and practitioners in setting research agendas
  • Encouraging agency responsibility for establishing a knowledge based practice culture
  • Incorporating service users and carers views
  • Encouraging networking among professionals
  • Strengthening the research literacy of social work and social care practitioners

Each subscribing agency will be linked to one of the nine universities and individually tailored programmes of work will be developed. The emphasis is on working in partnership to establish areas of work important to each agency, which will achieve the nationally identified objectives. Programmes will typically include:

  • Workshops, seminars and developmental events
  • Support to develop an agency approach to knowledge-based practice
  • Shared regional events
  • Conferences
  • Production of national (Quality Protects) and local research summaries
  • A website

National Making Research Count coordinator is Sue Bailey, contact details:

Sue Bailey, Making Research Count National Coordinator
School of Social Work and Psychosocial Studies
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
Tel: 01603 593557
Fax: 01603 593552
Email: s.e.bailey@uea.ac.uk

Keele Making Research Count

Keele Making Research Count runs a regional programme to provide this service to its local partner organisations. Current partners are Staffordshire County Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council, and Shropshire Council Our programme currently includes conferences, seminars, workshops and evaluation research days. Keele Making Research Count is constantly striving to develop its programme further in directions which will assist partners in their quest to provide good quality, evidence-based services to those in need of them, bearing in mind the need to monitor outcomes and achieve value across all services.

Aimed with practitioners and team managers particularly in mind, the evaluation research days are designed to encourage the critical evaluation of projects and research, as well as provide some tools with which to approach the planning of practitioner research. According to demand, further groups can be formed in order to support individual projects, using expertise provided by social work researchers within Keele University alongside peer support and mutual evaluation.

If your organisation would be interested in becoming a partner, or you would like further information on Making Research Count then please contact the administrator, Alison Woodward, contact details:

Alison Woodward
Making Research Count Administrator
School of Public Policy and Professional Practice
Chancellor's Building
Keele University
Staffordshire
ST5 5BG

Tel: 01782 733120
Email: mrc@keele.ac.uk

The Keele Making Research Count academic lead is Dr Jane Boylan at the School of Public Policy and Professional Practice. Email: j.boylan@keele.ac.uk

If you have any difficulties in using this site, please contact the administrator.

Queries and comments are welcome, as we want this site to be active, useful and user-friendly.