Research and influencing practice
Barnardo’s Policy and Research Unit provides practitioners, managers and service planners with the best available evidence of what works to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.
All Barnardo’s projects make a positive difference to the lives of the children, young people, families and communities with whom we work. The Research Team helps projects set and evaluate outcomes to demonstrate the extent of this change, and generate our own evidence of what works in practice.
The Research Team ensures that the voices of children, young people and their families are listened to as part of evaluating Barnardo’s projects and improving them to meet the needs of the community.
Speaking directly to those who use our projects also informs Barnardo’s campaigning and lobbying for changes in National policy. For example, our year-long research project ‘A Year in the Life’ involves 14 families from our services across the UK who are living below the poverty line. The aim of the study is to find out what it's really like to live in poverty in the UK today and to examine some of the pressures families experience.
The Research Team also supports Barnardo’s projects by providing all our staff with an Evidence Request Service (ERS). The ERS is designed to help colleagues find and use up-to-date and relevant research evidence from a wide range of sources.
The Research Team produces the Evidence Guide training pack that seeks to promote, encourage and support the use of research evidence in Social Care practice. The pack, designed for use with and by social care practitioners, describes the main elements of research-informed practice and outlines the benefits to be gained from this approach. A range of resources, activities and inputs aimed at assisting practitioners with the process of finding, assessing, adapting and applying research evidence in practice are also included.
The Research Team also works in partnership with other organisations on research and development projects of benefit to children and families. They conduct research for a number of external commissioners including the Scottish Executive, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department of Health, local authorities and other voluntary organisations.
Barnardo's Research Team aims to ensure that all our research is conducted to high ethical standards. We work to a statement of research ethics.
