Using knowledge exchange to bring about culture change in children and families social work departments

Child protection systems across the English-speaking world have been subject to damning critique in recent decades, to the extent that some commentators conclude that they may be doing more harm than good. A recent UK government-sponsored review conducted by Professor Eileen Munro argues for fundamental change in child protection practice and culture. Specifically, Munro argues that 'Local authorities and their partners should start an ongoing process to review and redesign the ways in which child and family social work is delivered, drawing on evidence of effectiveness of helping methods where appropriate and supporting practice that can implement evidence based ways of working with children and families' (2011, p.13)' Munro identifies the need to 'help professionals move from a compliance culture to a learning culture' (2011, p.6).
Munro's recommendation forms the central objective in this proposal: to help children and families social workers in two local authorities review and redesign their services in line with evidence of what is known to be effective and to do so in the context of a learning culture. The project partners include social work and knowledge exchange (KE) academics at the University of Edinburgh and key managers and practitioners in two neighbouring local authorities, The City of Edinburgh and East Lothian.
The proposal builds upon a previous successful project, which involved academics and social work practitioners from six local authorities working together on small pieces of practitioner research around effective practice in working with involuntary social work service users, involuntary being understood as those whose contact with social work was mandated. The focus of three of these projects was on children and families social work. This new proposal takes the findings of this project forward, casting the spotlight across a wide spectrum of social work practice with children and families.
Historically, social work agencies have invested in training events and initiatives in the hope that learning on these might be cascaded from participants into wider organisational structures. The evidence for this sort of transfer of learning is not strong. On the contrary, it is known that very little training activity results in positive changes to practice. One of the reasons for this is that training often occurs as a free-standing activity that is not clearly linked to organisational or practice objectives. Models of knowledge exchange, through recognising the prior knowledge, skills and values that practitioners bring to a subject, are considered to be more effective than traditional training initiatives in getting knowledge into practice. In this project we will utilise specific knowledge exchange activities, derived from the literature and shown to be effective in our previous project, to help bring about cultural change in the partner local authorities.
Our proposal consists of three strands, a horizontal one that will operate across organisations to discuss key themes relating to the current discourse on child protection; a vertical strand, which will aim to support practitioners develop examples of what is known to be effective practice and a third strand, which will work with managers around effective learning transfer. Together, the various strands are in line with Nutley et al's (2007) organizational excellence model of knowledge exchange whereby organisations, working in partnership with universities, become the locus for local experimentation, evaluation and practice development.
Our project will offer pointers and models about how cultural change in child protection might be brought about more widely. As such, it will be of interest to local authorities and to Government bodies across the UK and thus holds out the potential to evidence demonstrable social policy and practice benefits.

The project is of direct relevance to those involved and to their employing local authorities. Because it picks up on current policy themes, identified in the Munro Review of Child Protection, it will attract the interest of social work managers in local authorities across the UK, all of whom are grappling with how to implement Munro's recommendations. The project is also of interest to the Scottish Government, The Association of Directors of Social Work (ADSW) and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).
The literature, (Lonne et al, 2009) identifies difficulties with child protection systems across the English-speaking world. The project, then, has international significance. It will offer pointers about what is effective practice in children and families social work. However, the difficulty is getting this knowledge into practice. This requires work to change prevailing practice and management cultures. This is perhaps where our findings are likely to achieve most impact.
We are able to draw on lessons learnt from the successful completion of our previous ESRC knowledge exchange grant 'Engaging with Involuntary Service Users in Social Work' (RES-809-19-0016), awarded under the Engaging with Scottish Local Authorities (ESLA) Scheme, to maximise impact from this project. A strength of our proposal is in bringing together the subject knowledge of social work with the knowledge exchange expertise of the Centre for Research in Families and Relationships (CRFR), which boasts a well-established and effective infrastructure to support and disseminate KE findings.
Our project will achieve impact in different, complementary, ways:
We will develop skilled people. A completing social work PhD student will be the research fellow with relevant experience in engaging with children and families and in knowledge exchange with social workers. She will be able to consolidate and develop these skills on this project. A wider role in developing skilled people is at the heart of the practitioner research projects identified in the second strand of our work plan. Practitioners will be given access to the University library and other services. This was a successful aspect to the ESLA project and led to practitioners being supported to conduct and write up small pieces of research. Outputs from this include presentations in host authorities but also seminar inputs to wider audiences and joint publications in academic and professional journals. Additionally, one of the former practitioner researchers has applied for PhD study.
We will also achieve impact through partnerships, facilitating a flow of people across different local authorities and academic partners. The developing dialogue, relationships and connections that emerge from the knowledge exchange activities proposed provide a platform for ongoing knowledge exchange collaborations. It is significant that this current bid has its origins in relationships established and messages disseminated from the previous ESLA project. Building upon these relationships will help develop the kind of research excellence model identified by Nutley et al, (2007), whereby a research minded ethos can begin to permeate organisational cultures.
Activities to achieve impact include:
events in participating local authorities to disseminate and discuss findings;
a Scottish event targeted at representatives from the Scottish Government, local authorities, COSLA and ADSW;
academic and practice partners will present papers at relevant events such as the Multi-Agency Resource Service, the Scottish Child Care and Protection Network and the Centre for excellence for looked after children in Scotland conferences;
academic partners will lead in publishing at least three articles in peer-reviewed journals;
a briefing paper on what is effective in achieving change in children and families social work, produced by our partners, CRFR, and distributed through their extensive networks.