Welcome to the Confidence Through Evidence Toolkit

Making better use of evidence in social services

If we are serious about developing social work as a profession and having practitioners able to practise safely and innovatively, then we need to both develop and use evidence to inform practice.

(Changing Lives: Report of the 21st Century Social Work Review. Scottish Executive, 2006, page 55)

This toolkit is part of IRISS's Evidence-informed Practice Portal. The portal provides access to evidence sources, evidence summaries and updates on new research, publications, news and events. The Confidence Through Evidence Toolkit provides guidance on the process of finding and using evidence for service innovation and improvement.

The toolkit has four steps designed to help you Acquire, Assess, Adapt and Apply evidence in your practice. Within each step, you will be asked a number of questions that will guide you towards resources aimed at improving your skills and confidence in each of these areas. In each instance, we aim to support you to arrive at solutions relevant to your particular practice needs.

For more information about the toolkit, including how it can help and how to use it, please go to the Introduction.

We welcome your feedback, so please do get in touch with your comments.