SSCR currently has twelve research projects commissioned...
Care and support for people with complex and severe needs: Innovations and practice - a scoping study
Professor Caroline Glendinning, University of York, 1 June 2010 for 20 months, £249,869
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To identify the key features of the service and support arrangements desired by different groups of adults and older people with severe and complex needs
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To provide evidence of initiatives to deliver support to people with complex and severe needs that have the desired features and the potential to constitute examples of 'good practice'. Examples may focus on some or all of the different levels of commissioning, operational organisation and front-line delivery.
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Connecting people: an exploratory study of how health and social care workers help people to develop and maintain relationships
Dr Martin Webber, King's College London, 1 September 2010 for 24 months, £242,615
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To examine how social care practitioners are helping people with mental health problems to access more social capital through discussions with and observations of social care workers in a range of NHS mental health services and voluntary sector services.
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To investigate how social care practitioners help people to develop new social relationships and to feel secure in these.
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To investigate how practitioners help people with mental health problems make use of the power, prestige, wealth or abilities of individuals they know to help them move on in their lives.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Costs and outcomes of skilled support for adults with complex needs in supported accommodation
Professor Jim Mansell, University of Kent, 1 July 2010 for 18 months, £278,680
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To evaluate the impact of skilled staff support on the lives of people with complex needs. The focus is on people with severe and profound learning disabilities who have serious challenging behaviour and/or additional multiple disabilities, and/or autism.
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To describe the nature of the support required and its implications.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Estimating future demand for social care for younger disabled adults
Professor Eric Emerson, Lancaster University, 1 September 2010 for 12 months, £99,350
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To predict future need for services for younger disabled people based on research carried out in ten local authorities. Information will be collected on a random sample of 500 children aged 14-16 who have special educational needs on: what planning has been undertaken for their transition to adult services; how likely they are to need adult social care services when they become adults; and the specific types of support they will need.
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How effectively does the direct payments system work for people who lack the mental capacity to consent?
Dr Dan Robotham, Mental Health Foundation, 1 April 2011 for 24 months, £231,655
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To investigate the views of a range of stakeholders including staff who influence decisions about direct payments
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To explore the role played by 'suitable persons' who manage the direct payment of a person without capacity
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To gain insight into the experiences with direct payments of service users who lack capacity (especially people with learning disabilities or dementia)
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To produce a guide for practitioners and an information leaflet for 'suitable persons' and service users to inform and explain the regulations for direct payments relating to people who lack capacity.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Improving effective integrated home support for people with dementia and their carers (PWD) - Development of a service fidelity index
Professor Robert Jones, University of Nottingham, 1 June 2010 for 30 months, £245,298
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To review the evidence on what works well, and is economic, in providing successful integrated support at home by service support teams for people with dementia and their carers
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To develop a 'template' of the key service components needed to provide such successful support for this user group
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To devise a measuring tool (fidelity index) to check how well service delivery matches up against the template and evaluate the tool through extensive field testing
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To disseminate the evidence base and measuring tool to support social care departments in the commissioning and auditing of dementia services.
View Project Outline (PDF)
Liberty, equality, capacity: the impact of the deprivation of liberty safeguards on social care practice and human rights
Joan Langan, University of Bristol, 1 May 2010 for 27 months, £249,953
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To generate knowledge concerning how the well-being of disempowered individuals can be safeguarded by adult social care practitioners and their autonomy promoted, in circumstances that may deprive them of their liberty.
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Overcoming barriers: unpaid care and employment in England
Dr Linda Pickard and Professor Martin Knapp, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1 January 2011 for 12 months, £138,657
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To review interventions to support carers in employment, focusing on support for the cared-for person
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To review current practice and innovations by local councils to support carers in employment
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To identify the relationships between unpaid care provision, employment status, health status and receipt of benefits, using large-scale survey data
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To carry out an initial economic evaluation of costs and savings of interventions
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To identify interventions that merit evaluation through further research.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Personalisation of carers: the roles of carers in assessment, support planning and managing personal budgets
Dr Wendy Mitchell and Professor Caroline Glendinning, University of York, 1 January 2011 for 24 months, £338,956
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To describe current local policies and practices in English adult social care regarding the role of carers in the processes of personalisation
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To examine how far these policies and practices recognise and balance the respective needs and aspirations of service users and informal carers, especially when service users have CCIs
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To investigate the views of service users with CCIs and their carers on the roles they wish carers to play
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To identify potential issues and/or areas of tension between practitioners, service users and carers
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To recommend changes to the processes of personalisation so that they more accurately reflect the aspirations of service users and carers respectively.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Personalisation of home care for older people using managed personal budgets
Dr Kate Baxter and Professor Caroline Glendinning, University of York, 1 January 2011 for 24 months, £252,167
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To review innovative practices in local authority commissioning and in the contracts for managed personal budgets, and assess how effectively these
changes enable choice, control and flexibility
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To examine the roles played by care managers and other support planners as intermediaries in shaping the expectations of personal budget holders and the
demands they make on providers
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To indentify the factors in the behaviour of home care providers that affect their responses to changes in contracts and user demands
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To assess how effective new contract and support planning arrangements have been in creating opportunities for choice and control, from the perspective of older personal budget holders.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Personalisation of services - a scoping study
Professor Ann Netten, University of Kent, 1 October 2009 for 18 months, £169,951
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To identify approaches and interventions that merit evaluation, providing a platform for formulating research questions and designing studies that will help to build the evidence base for what works in 'personalised' care. This will help councils and providers in commissioning, developing and refining effective and cost-effective care and support arrangements.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Safeguarding and best practice in services for adults with learning disabilities
Dr Rachel Fyson, University of Nottingham, 1 January 2011 for 20 months, £156,991
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To explore whether support staff share the same understandings of poor practice as people with learning disabilities using services
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To discover the extent to which support staff are able to acknowledge the impact of poor practice on service users
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To identify any barriers which exist in relation to frontline staff reporting poor practice and abuse to the appropriate authorities.
View Project Outline| (PDF)
Social care practice with carers: an investigation of practice models
Professor Jill Manthorpe, King's College London, 1 July 2010 for 12 months, £112,253
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To consider practice activities and models, and their effectiveness as measured by the staff, commissioners and carers themselves using a concurrent mixed-methods design.
View Project Outline (PDF)