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 at the University of Birmingham. This monthly update allows Jon, and colleagues across IMPACT, to share key highlights, milestones, and learning.
On Monday 6 July, IMPACT colleagues, sector leaders, care practitioners and people with lived experience from across the four nations, came together to celebrate IMPACT’s Fifth Anniversary. Jon officially opened the event and reflected on IMPACT’s journey, the day itself, and what lies ahead in the below update.
Celebrating five years of IMPACT
When we first saw the national tender for what would become IMPACT in early 2019, travelled round Europe to learn from leading international centres, submitted our bid in early 2020 and found out that we’d been successful just before Christmas 2020 – we had no way of knowing that we’d end up celebrating our fifth anniversary the day after England’s 4am victory over Mexico in the World Cup!
Despite a number of trains cancelled due to an apparent shortage of drivers, we celebrated with a half-day face-to-face workshop with a really diverse array of longstanding supporters, collaborators and people interested in finding out more. People came from all over the UK, bringing their lived experience, practice and policy knowledge, and research expertise – helping us to celebrate and take stock of what we’ve learned.
When we started in summer 2021, we had one part-time member of staff (me), which soon grew to a very small initial team. There’s now nearly 70 of us at any one time, working all over the UK in front-line services and communities – from the Western Isles of Scotland to Anglesey, and from East Sussex to Portadown. By the end of our initial grant in December 2027, we’ll have run over 200 in-depth practical improvement projects – roughly equivalent to one for every Council and Integrated Trust in all four nations of the UK.
We’re really conscious that this is an unprecedented opportunity to make a difference. It’s almost certainly the largest investment ever made in supporting the use of evidence in adult social care practice across the UK. We’re incredibly grateful to our funders, the ESRC and The Health Foundation for making this possible.
At the fifth anniversary celebrations, we shared examples of the work we do – including sharing the I Can, I Will video that young people with learning disabilities in Pembrokeshire made to help other young people believe that it’s possible to go into further education, training and employment. As one parent said to us, they spend their first 19 years in ‘childhood’, but the next 70 or 80 years (a lifetime) as an adult – “if we get that [transition] right, it determines the course of the rest of their lives.”
However, the main focus was on launching a short report which brings together learning from the first five years of IMPACT – and the factors which help to support long-lasting evidence-informed change. This draws out the things that help to bring about positive change, as well as things you need to do to get round all the many barriers, and it gives some practical examples from our work to make it more real and show what’s possible. Some people will be really interested in the detail of what IMPACT has done and is continuing to do, but almost everyone has been keen to know what they can do locally to take forward new ideas and how to go about maximising the chances of success.
Scroll to read the report below, or click the button to open it in a new tab for a larger view.
We’re working really hard on possible funding for a next phase of IMPACT (which would be from January 2028 onwards if we’re successful) – and we hope in advance that you could join us for a future 10th anniversary! However, reaching the ripe old age of 5 still feels an achievement in such a rapidly changing context, and with another 24 projects due to start this September we won’t let up for a moment.
Thanks for all your help and support, and please get in touch directly if there’s anything we do that would be helpful to know more about.
Thank you for reading.
Jon
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