The Social Care Institute for Excellence and evidence-based policy and practice

This paper reviews the lessons for evidence-based policy and practice (EBP) arising from the work of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), a government-funded agency established in 2001 to improve social care in the UK. The paper describes a ten-year programme developing an inclusive approach to what counts as knowledge, and the challenges in ensuring that knowledge is relevant to improving practice in social work and social care. These challenges include reviewing what counts as evidence in EBP, changing the relationship between EBP and practice, and recognising the scientific value (as well as the moral imperative) of including the knowledge held by people who use services. In methodological terms, the work includes developing systematic qualitative synthesis to take account of a broader range of evidence and economic evaluation appropriate to social care. The paper concludes with a discussion of some implications for international debates about the role of evidence-based policy and practice.