Models of Knowledge Mobilisation in Social Care Settings: A rapid review

Background and Context

Sharing research evidence and getting it used in social care practice can be challenging. Giving people access to evidence, even when it’s been summarised, doesn’t mean it will be used in the real world.

To help embed research into social care practice, Social Care Wales (SCW) developed a  'Research and Development Strategy for Wales', and an evidence offer to help social care providers, leaders, and designers use research evidence . This evidence offer uses an approach called *knowledge mobilisation. 

* Knowledge mobilisation aims to get the right information to the right people at the right time. It helps to make evidence more accessible, and to connect people, to help them make sense of the evidence and apply it to their own settings.

SCW wanted to make sure that they had not missed any knowledge mobilisation methods that might be useful. So, they asked the Evidence Centre to look for published evidence in this area, and compare it to the methods they use in the ‘Evidence Offer’. Ensuring that any workforce is properly trained and engaged to understand and use research evidence is important to improve practice.

Aim

This rapid review is looking for the best published evidence of good and effective practices of knowledge mobilisation in Social Care settings from across the world.  This review may help to improve SCW’s knowledge mobilisation methods, (which are part of their evidence offer model) by comparing with the latest evidence and best practices. The findings will be used to fill any gaps in the current methods.

Strategy 

An online search was done across three databases (MEDLINE, ASSIA & CINAHL). The same major search terms (Social Care, Knowledge Mobilisation) were used across all three databases. These studies are presented here.

Outcomes

From an initial 504 studies, 5 were relevant for further study. These studies covered practices in Australia, Canada, China, The Netherlands, US, UK and Sweden. Both adult and children social care settings were studied. 

All five studies show that knowledge mobilisation for research education needs to be creative and use a range of methods: online and in-person. There also needs to careful screening of the information provided.

Impact 

This study has shown that the SCW knowledge mobilisation methods align well with a number of similar programmes across the world. It has shown that there are some gaps i.e. evaluation and feedback, which could be considered as an additional item for inclusion. 

Lay Summary written by Anthony Cope, Public Partnership Group Member
 

To read the full report, click here.