News and Events

Health and Care Research Wales annual conference

by

16th October 2025

Health and Care Research Wales have funded SCALE with £1.8million catalytic funding so members of the team were delighted to be invited to attend their annual conference at Sophia Gardens. This year was their 10th anniversary and included thought provoking keynotes, plenaries, parallel sessions and even some poetry!

Our Director Prof. Stuart Allen was part of a session on How will AI make a difference for research? alongside Prof. Reyer Zwiggelaar where he highlighted our mission at SCALE to exploit the potential of Artificial Intelligence to address challenges within the social care sector and build smarter, more agile and more effective social care services that are humanist, transparent, equitable, and grounded in lived experience.

In addition, SCALE were part of an exhibition stand alongside our colleagues from CASCADE and CARE. Visitors enjoyed taking part in an activity where they typed their answer to ‘Describe your vision for AI in the future of social care’ and then our clever AI coding generated an image based on what they had typed. Images varied from robots to computer generated reports, with some looking like a comic book strip and others influenced by William Morris!

The Artificial Intelligence Research Gap in Children’s Social Care

by

Last month, Verity met with researchers from around the world in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the ISPCAN Congress 2025.

She presented on key outcomes of SCALE’s two recent “Welsh AI and Social Care Summits”:

  1. AI should support, not replace, human contact in social care.
  2. Social workers need training in AI literacy to ensure responsible AI adoption and use.
  3. Bias mitigation, data security, accuracy and sustainability are key considerations for responsible AI in social care.
  4. AI to support child protection decision-making is potentially valuable but requires a cautious approach.

The main takeaway? There is an urgent, global need for evidence-based research to guide policy and practice as AI technologies become integrated into child protection systems. We hope that SCALE will be able to help fill this AI research gap in children’s social care. 

ISPCAN, is the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. A multidisciplinary organisation which brings together professionals from medicine, social work, law, public health, and mental health.

Verity said:

“It was genuinely insightful to hear from professionals and other researchers about their views, concerns and hopes for AI. We discussed the challenge of AI literacy and importance of involving tech developers, children, families, researchers and professionals in tackling some of the key threats and opportunities posed by AI in child protection. I was buoyed by their passion and determination to take action – watch this space for future collaborations!”