Social innovation can help prevent domestic violence: UCalgary project

The University of Calgary is working on a project to end domestic violence by social innovation, generating new ideas to solve social problems.

SHIFT is about how to prevent domestic violence from happening, says Lana Wells, an associate professor of social work at UofC.

“The role of SHIFT has really been about trying to understand how we can go upstream to stop domestic and sexual violence before it happens,” said Wells, who is also the Brenda Strafford Chair in the Prevention of Domestic Violence at the university.

To @wells_lana, founder of Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence and #UCalgary researcher, social innovation is about generating new ideas to solve social problems and keeping those in need at the forefront of these solutions pic.twitter.com/N5dKGp5Lfs

— U Calgary (@UCalgary) October 14, 2022

What is social innovation?

“It’s really about generating new ideas to social problems,” she said. “And when you’re generating those ideas, you want to bring in a variety of stakeholders that can actually understand different points of view of the problem, so that you’re getting the best people together to figure out how we can get underneath society’s big social problems.”

‘SHIFT-to-Learn learning’

Wells says her work is helping to create social good by their “SHIFT-to-Learn learning” platform available on shifttolearn.com.

“Here’s a place where we’re building educational micro-learning opportunities for practitioners and policy makers to really advance their understanding and thinking about how to stop violence before it starts,” she said.

She adds this gives people an opportunity to learn in their home and to have access to “new and emerging research.”

Future driven by social innovation

“It’s a future where policy makers, system leaders, practitioners have the ability to adapt and change in real time,” added Wells.

She also explains they are trying to give leaders, practitioners, and policy makers support to have good evidence to understand the problem by understanding the root causes of violence to be able to make informed good decisions.

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“There’s a shared understanding and a shared vision around preventing it from happening in the first place,” Wells said.

For more information on SHIFT, visit their website.