Mental Health First Aid improves knowledge, reduces stigma and makes people more likely to offer support

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Sarah Knowles summarises a recent meta-analysis of Mental Health First Aid, which claims to be the first study to quantitatively synthesise the evidence in this field.

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'Knowledge is the power to do good'

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Following the publication of the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Social Workers in Adult Services yesterday, the special blog asks how the Social Care Elf can help social workers with their knowledge, skills and continuing professional development.

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Relationship training for children and family practitioners: does it work?

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Martin Webber looks at a rare social work randomised controlled trial (RCT) on relationship training for practitioners working with children and families and finds that even findings from a study using ‘gold standard’ research methodology have to be carefully examined for reliability.

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Reality orientation and skills training may improve cognition in dementia, but don’t jump to conclusions

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Well this is an interesting one. The abstract of a recent review by Carrion et al concludes that cognitive psychosocial interventions such as reality orientation and skills training improve cognition (Carrion, 2013). Woohoo, I thought; fantastic!  And then I read the review… Methods The authors searched the usual bibliographic databases for randomised and non-randomised controlled trials, [read the full story…]