Welcome to the IMPACT Director’s Update. Jon Glasby has been the Director of IMPACT since 2021, when the centre officially launched – he is a qualified social worker and Professor of Health and Social Care. This new monthly update will allow Jon and colleagues across IMPACT to share key highlights, milestones, and learning. Read on to get an introduction and find out more about our away day in March.
Welcome
When IMPACT started in Spring/Summer 2021, we had a lot of ambition but only one part-time member of staff. We were also conscious that UK adult social care had never really done anything like this before, and that it was new to absolutely everyone. Fast forward a few years, and we have more than 60 members of staff based in frontline services all over the UK, and in September, we’ll start another 24 new projects.
Cardiff away day
In March, we brought all staff, from right across the four nations and the whole centre, together for the annual IMPACT away day. This year, we were in Cardiff, working from the Principality Stadium in the midst of Six Nations preparations – with a real buzz in the air. Our ‘National Embedding’ and ‘Evidence and Evaluation’ teams joined forces to run the day, helping us to look at what we’re learning across all our projects and activities.
The morning session gave us all a chance to sit back and take stock of the activities across IMPACT that are leading to evidence-informed change, tied to our fourth aim: improving understanding of what elements of evidence implementation do and do not work in practice, and using this to overcome barriers.
Staff from right across IMPACT got stuck in, making posters and zines to draw out learning from across our evidence reviews, projects, outputs and work with national policy and practice. There were quotes, maps, diagrams, photos and more. For everyone it was a great reminder of not just how much the centre has achieved, but also that sometimes it can be helpful to get more creative – and the skills and parts of themselves that different colleagues bring above and beyond their specific role.
In the afternoon, National Embedding colleagues led us through a “country walk” to look at posters from our work within and across the four nations, and a Dragon’s Den session to pitch and test out national and thematic priorities for the coming year.
The day highlighted what different people and groups value about IMPACT, which included:
- An approach to ‘evidence’ which combines lived experience, practice knowledge, and research.
- Staff who are rooted within each of the four nations, but who can also share learning across boundaries.
- Practical support in the realities of the workplace and of people’s lives to make changes in local practice and services, coupled with wider support to sustain and scale innovation.
- A commitment to co-production that’s built into everything we do.
- A centre which focuses on adult social care in its own right, but also recognises the importance of linking to other sectors, such as health, housing, children’s services, and communities.
- A recognition that good care isn’t just about ‘services’ but about having a life, with social care as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
Essentially, IMPACT is about ‘learning by doing’: having someone alongside you in the realities of practice to think of different ways to do things, make changes, work out what is and isn’t working, decide what to do next, and helping others to learn from that experience.
How to stay up to date – follow us!
There’s so much going on at any one time that it can be difficult to keep up with the latest news.
You can sign up on our website for a regular centre-wide update, and you can search our projects and resources by topic, by nation or a series of more cross-cutting themes. However, we’ll also be sharing these regular updates from me as IMPACT Director (and some guest contributors!) as an additional way of putting this detail in context and highlighting a couple of key developments each month – watch this space!
Thank you for reading.
Jon