As a member of the knowledge and information service at the NSPCC, I am responsible for collating and sending out our Current Awareness Service for Policy, Practice and Research – or Caspar – every week. Caspar is a weekly email that keeps more than 27,000 subscribers up to date with child protection information.
I spend every working morning checking emails, RSS feeds, social media and websites for material that might be of interest to people working with or for children and young people. A wide range of resources are available and the contents of each email can cover government publications, guidance, relevant news stories, conferences, service evaluations, research findings, reports, practice examples and serious case reviews.
We know from our subscribers that the available quantity of information they could – or should – be reading can be daunting. As one subscriber put it: “This is a fast moving theatre of work and without Caspar I would find keeping myself up to date a real challenge. I also use the information to alert relevant colleagues of items of interest and to challenge agency members of my boards.” In a constantly progressing field, busy practitioners need to keep themselves informed. Caspar helps them by summarising all the child protection developments of the week, in a format which means they can easily share highlights with other colleagues.
So that we signpost the most high quality and relevant information possible, we have a strict set of criteria for what makes it into Caspar. Here are three of the key questions we consider:
1 What is the relevance to people working with children?
Caspar subscribers work in a variety of roles, from practitioners to policy makers, and in a range of sectors including local authorities, education, charities and police forces. Before putting anything into Caspar we ask ourselves who will find it useful and why. We focus on opportunities for learning as we know there is a growing interest in the importance of development and improvement. Everything has to be recently published because we know that the world of child protection work can move quickly and information can become out of date or irrelevant easily. We try to focus on resources which are cost free, because we know that cost can be a barrier to access for a lot of people.
2 Where is the evidence?
Because of the focus on learning, most of the information in Caspar comes from research, practice examples, or guidance which can be used to improve practice. We check the quality of all the material we include to make sure it is reliable, authoritative and any data provided by research or statistics is robust; we tend not to include anecdotal evidence or stories that are not based on fact. We aim to be as unbiased as possible, and provide links to the original source so our readers can access any further information they require.
3 How will this help children?
By sharing new learning, we enable Caspar readers to find out what works to support children and prevent abuse, and apply it to their practice. This could be by learning about a new service which can be introduced at a strategic level; reading updated legislation and making the necessary changes to safeguarding practice; or using a new video in a support session with a child.
For me, working on Caspar has highlighted the enthusiasm among child protection professionals for creating a culture of evidence-based practice. It is encouraging to see how much people value receiving Caspar emails and how being able to access up to date policy, practice and research has a positive impact on their daily work.
The NSPCC has recently re-launched Caspar to include a blog, which means people can access the service on a daily basis. Sign up to weekly Caspar’s weekly e-bulletins here.
Content on this page is produced and controlled by the NSPCC, sponsor of the Guardian Social Care Network practice hub.
