At the Alliance we have been arguing for ages that the evidence community needs to learn more about the use of research by policymakers and professionals. What exactly helps people to use evidence? We need more...

Last month the Alliance’s Senior Research Officer Emma Taylor-Collins was invited to speak about evidence at a Citizens Advice Research & Campaigns Forum in Bristol.  The event, focusing on using evidence to influence policy, brought together...

The What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care shares its next steps. Today is World Social Work Day – an event that encourages the celebration and promotion of the profession’s contributions to individuals, families, communities and...

Earlier in the year, we invited people from practitioner, policy and professional bodies with an interest in using evidence to a Scottish Evidence Summit. The day was organised in partnership with Iriss. Thirty senior representatives, from...

Richard Clubbe discusses the mixed findings of Sense about Science’s spot check on how transparent government departments are about their evidence use. Last week Sense about Science published a report on how transparent the UK government...

Away from the despairing talk of ‘post-truth politics’, governments in countries such as the UK, Australia, Canada and France have been setting up important new institutions whose job is to reinforce evidence, and indeed truth, in...

When government implements far-reaching policies whilst ignoring the evidence there can be catastrophic consequences, writes Geoff Mulgan (Nesta). Private finance initiatives (PFIs) and public-private partnerships (PPPs) are in the spotlight again thanks to the collapse of...

Evidence should be more than a footnote in the revamped Ministerial Code, says David Walker, contributing editor for Guardian Public and chair of the ESRC’s Understanding Society board. Theresa May has revamped the Ministerial Code, the mini-bible...

Let’s have the courage to consider the harm that our interventions might do, as well as their intended impact, writes Dr Nick Axford (Plymouth University and Dartington Service Design Lab). Not a million miles away from...

On 7 November leaders of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the College of Policing and the Chartered College of Teaching met at the Royal Society to sign the Declaration on Evidence, written by Professor Jonathan...

Pippa Coutts (Alliance for Useful Evidence Research and Policy Manager) and Edward Orlik (What Works Team in the Cabinet Office) reflect on the What Works Network’s learning around what makes an evidence centre successful. The What...

Greg Wilkinson (Traversum) and Jonathan Breckon (Alliance for Useful Evidence) on the development of a new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care. At the National Children and Adult Services conference in Bournemouth this morning, the...