Dates: 1 August 2015 - 31 July 2018
Funder: NIHR School for Social Care Research
Project description
Investing in preventative services is seen as an essential mechanism for dealing with budgetary pressures and the challenges of an ageing population. However, improving the value for money of the social care system through early intervention and prevention requires knowledge about the impact that different interventions have on the future care needs, costs and outcomes for people with different needs and their carers at different points in their journeys through care and support systems.
Evaluating the impact of prevention and early intervention services is methodologically challenging. Recent improvements in local data systems and in methods of analysis mean there is now a genuine opportunity in some English local authorities to use local data systems to evaluate the effect of prevention and early intervention schemes.
This study is developing and implementing a general evaluation framework that sets principles and processes that could, in principle, be implemented by all local authorities in England to assess on an ongoing basis the prevention effects of their services.
Methods
The study has recruited social care (and, as appropriate, health care) agencies and in each is: mapping and assessing policies, processes, services and outcomes that shape or are shaped by the local prevention scheme evaluated; auditing existing evidence and helping local partners develop (if required) the data bases needed for a reliable evaluation of preventive effects; and implementing statistical methods for the identification of the impact on costs and outcomes of the interventions evaluated.
Further project information
Principal Investigator at LSE: Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez
CPEC Research team: Joanna Marczak, Gerald Wistow, Valentina Zigante
Countries: England
Keywords: prevention, social care, integration
Contact
Jose-Luis Fernandez
j.fernandez@lse.ac.uk