The Insight Collective - our new research, data, innovation and improvement service for social care

We’ve launched a new research, data, innovation and improvement service for social care called the Insight Collective.

Through this service we'll provide access to the latest research and data, guidance on training, opportunities to work together, and advice on the available support.

The new Insight Collective website is a place where people delivering and accessing care can discuss the topics that matter to them, share their knowledge, and gain confidence.

There’s also a guide to upcoming events to help build a better picture of what’s happening across Wales and beyond.

The aim of the Insight Collective is to work together to make a positive difference to social care.

It supports this by focusing on three key areas – research and data, sharing and learning, and coaching and advice.

You told us that finding up-to-date research relevant to your practice can be a challenge.

We want people working in social care to feel confident, supported and inspired to use evidence.

To help you with this, we’re producing evidence summaries that present research findings in ways that are easier to understand, and supporting access to academic journal articles so you can develop practice based on real-world evidence.

We’ve put together a researcher support offer that shows the different ways we can help academic researchers in social care, and we'll we work with people who access and deliver social care to identify priority research topics that will encourage new research.

You’ll also find data about social care and related topics on the National Social Care Data Portal for Wales. The portal brings together data on social care in Wales and aims to make it easy to find and use.

Learning - and sharing our learning - is an important part of the Insight Collective, so we've developed a package of services to help you connect with and learn from peers and experts.

We’ve created the project finder to spread ideas and help people to learn from practice by sharing information about the work, where it’s happening, who’s involved, and how to find out more. It aims to help people connect and learn from each other.

Our training library lists opportunities to improve data and analytical skills, helping people working in social care collect the best evidence to support their work.

On our events pages, you can find a selection of events based in Wales that are about improving and developing social care.

Our communities, meanwhile, are spaces where you can connect with people who are in similar roles, and who face similar challenges. They bring together social care practitioners, innovators and people with lived experience to create the energy and momentum for change.

We offer a range of services to help guide you through the process of carrying out research, data and innovation work and understanding its impact on people who use care and support.

On the Insight Collective’s coaching pages, you can find out more about our free innovation coaching service. Our coaches are on hand to help you bring your ideas to life. They can support you to develop and test your idea safely, offering up to 12 hours of bespoke support over a six-week period.

We’ll also support you to understand the impact of your work and measure the difference it’s making. We can make the evaluation process easier to understand, identify the changes you’re trying to make, and explore which measurement tools would be most appropriate to generate effective learning and reporting.

You can find out more about these services on the Insight Collective’s evaluation and Developing Evidence Enriched Practice (DEEP) pages.