“How Do You Know If You Are Making a Difference?: A Practical Handbook for Public Service Organisations” with Dr Ailsa Cook from Matter of Focus

Event details

Social Policy Workshop on

– “How Do You Know If You Are Making a Difference?: A Practical Handbook for Public Service Organisations” 

with Dr Ailsa Cook from Matter of Focus

21st September, 12 noon, Church Lane Building Boardroom, University of York (In person only) Please register for this event here

Format of the session: This will be a helpful seminar to think about research impact and how our work can help make a difference in the organisations we work with. This will be an interactive session sharing learning from work with 150 organisations on how they know they are making a difference. Participants will have a chance to explore how these insights might be applied in their context whether assessing the impact of research; getting evidence to action; or leading public services and policy implementation.

Who should attend: Researchers working with public service organisations (regardless of sector - public, private or voluntary); partners within those organisations who want to explore further how to improve their own organisations; and graduate students who want to continue working in these fields in the future.

About the book: Why is it hard to know if you are making a difference in public services? What can you do about it? Public services throughout the world face the challenge of tackling complex issues where multiple factors influence change. This book sets out practical and theoretically robust, tried and tested approaches to understanding and tracking change that any organisation can use to ensure it makes a difference to the people it cares about. With case studies from health, community, research, international development and social care, this book shows that with the right tools and techniques, public services can track their contribution to social change and become more efficient and effective.

About the speaker