The mission for the TGC’s research is to provide rigorous evidence relating to social work and social care practice using a range of research methodologies. This includes those methodologies less familiar to social work research, including experimental and quasi-experimental research.
The initial topic focus of the TGC’s research has been on alcohol and drug use in relation to social work education and practice. This focus and interest continues, however the Centre’s research has already developed and expanded to include other topic foci. To date we have been working closely with statutory agencies and charities working with children and families in social care settings as well as those specialising in substance use. We have also been successful in working with Scottish and Welsh governments to support their development of policy and practice relating to social work and substance use.
Our research has two main strands:
In order to develop better evidence about what works, we need to be able to describe the extent of particular issues, the nature of current practice and to identify what we know about what appears to work best. This requires developing and adapting a range of methods, some of which have been used in social care and some of which are comparatively rarely used, e.g. the exploration of existing datasets.
The Goldberg Centre will have three main areas of evaluative research:
We will continue to work with local authorities, charities and other funders to carry-out smaller scale evaluations. The central ideas are:
Exploratory studies within this strand will identify the ways in which interventions could most usefully be learnt and used by social workers and will provide important indications of their impact. Where findings are positive, this will provide the rationale for rigorous experimental evaluations.
The most rigorous evaluative design involves a valid comparison group. However, the practical and ethical issues in such studies are considerable. This may be in part why so few have been carried out in social work. The Goldberg Centre is centrally concerned with using and developing such methods and these are likely to make up the bulk of the work of the Centre.
Tilda’s bequest will fund one randomised controlled trial, which will involve the most promising of the approaches evaluated in the exploratory work outlined above. The Centre has received additional funding for a quasi-experimental evaluation and will be developing a number of other such bids.
