From this forum, after listening and having conversations, hearing how it does work, I feel a little more empowered. How often do we have this opportunity just to listen and reflect? (Participant, Change workshop)

Our events provide sector-led support to increase competence and confidence, through opportunities to learn, reflect, discuss and exchange knowledge. We provide a range of learning events.

Our current events are listed in our Delivery Programme and below.

Partners receive free places at our events. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to book places or to enquire about places for non-Partners.

webinars

Webinars last one hour and are accessible from your computer. Support webinars  highlight the new resources available to Partners from RiPfA.  Expert webinars highlight research messages and practice examples for an emerging or highly topical area of practice.

workshops

In our one-day Research Messages workshops, researchers set out the essential messages on a key topic and provide opportunities for discussion, reflection and action planning. Each year we also run workshops with Research in Practice on a topic that is pertinent to adults’ and children’s services.

conferences

Conferences bring together leading researchers and practitioners at all levels with an interest in a central topic. They include a mixture of presentations and group work to discuss, reflect on and agree how to implement learning.

telephone knowledge exchanges

Throughout the year we run short telephone meetings to exchange research and practice expertise around a burning practice question that has been identified by a Partner through one-to-one support.

annual events

Our Link Officers’ and Champions event includes seminars on how to maximise the benefit from membership of RiPfA, and updates on essential evidence-based knowledge and skills to improve practice.

Leaders’ Forum and Councillors’ Seminar  provide research and insight into thorny areas of service improvement and emerging learning about how best to tackle these, as well as allowing the exchange of expertise.

current events:

Events Calendar April- September 2013

Expert webinar: Making the RAS work

25 April, 12-1, virtual

Good decisions about resource allocation are at the heart of effective practice and are essential for efficiency. In this webinar, Lucy Series will present her research on how councils are using Resource Allocation Systems; and discuss how you can ensure fairness and equality of access to scarce resources.

Research messages workshop: Engaging users at the front-line

15 May Bristol, 27 June London, 11 Sept Birmingham, 10-4

Involving users and carers is fundamental to service improvement. Front-line staff play a vital role in ensuring users and carers are listened to and that their views are taken into account. This is especially important for people with communication difficulties, who lack capacity or who are hard to reach. This workshop will look at the barriers to genuine involvement, approaches and techniques to support self-advocacy, and how to ensure that learning from users and carers impacts on services.

Support webinar: Getting the most out of RiPfA resources

11 June, 26 Sept, 12-1, virtual

An informative overview of the resources we are producing in our delivery programme, and crucially how you can get the most out of them.

Leaders’ forum: Making resources go further through prevention

8-9 May, Dartington

Leaders have to make resources go further than ever before. This raises crucial questions about where to invest to reduce need, how to compare the effectiveness of different initiatives, and what is a good enough outcome.

At this residential forum, leaders will hear from key social care researchers on how councils are implementing prevention and service improvement, and how they can identify value for money.

This forum links to our joint project with the NIHR School for Social Care Research and Personal Social Services Research Unit at LSE to increase the uptake and impact of research in practice. Leaders will find space to discuss and debate the impact of research on policy and service delivery, and to develop their response to these dilemmas.

Councillors’ Seminar: Building community capacity through a public health lens

20 June, Birmingham

Increasingly councils are looking to communities to identify local solutions that increase the well-being of citizens. Public health provides a powerful vehicle for this. This annual event will present the latest research on building community capacity, and will support Councillors to identify how they can work with communities, and professionals within social care and public health to improve constituents’ lives.

Expert webinar: Involving users to improve commissioning decisions

11 July, 12-1, virtual

Involving users in designing, commissioning and monitoring services increases effectiveness and helps to ensure the best use of resources. However, user involvement is often limited and the potential of their contributions not realised. In this webinar, Deborah Fisher will present learning from her work with users, the voluntary sector and councils to achieve better commissioning practice.

Research messages workshop: Getting impact from safeguarding training

2 July, 10-4, Manchester

Organisations and individuals invest time, money and great effort in safeguarding training. This event examines the research on how to ensure learning is transferred back to the workplace. It focuses on what can be done to ensure training leads to safer and more empowering practice that makes a difference to adults who need support.