Dates: 1 October 2016 - 31 January 2019
Funder: Department of Health
Project description
The Care Act 2014 came into force in April 2015, introducing improved rights for carers in England. Most notably, the Act entitled carers to a needs assessment regardless of the type and severity of needs of the person they care for. The CASC project is evaluating the support that carers receive from the social care system post- Care Act 2014. In particular, it aims to:
understand what care resources and procedures are in place to assess and meet the care needs of carers in England, and to examine the extent to which they have changed following the implementation of the Act; and
evaluate the outcomes of different types of support provided to carers since the implementation of the Care Act 2014.
The study is addressing these questions using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, including statistical analyses of Local Authority returns and of the Survey of Adult Carers in England (SACE), a review of online information, and semi-structured interviews with carers and Local Authority staff.
Methods
CASC is adopting a mixed-method approach across four concurrent workstreams:
1. Mapping of local support systems - a website review of the type and quality of online information about local authority services for carers
2. An in-depth process evaluation of carer identification, needs assessment and support systems in three local authorities, using a combination of content analysis of local policy documents and interviews with relevant adult social care practitioners, commissioners, care managers, and directors
3. An impact evaluation of the outcomes of different types of carer services to develop models to estimate carers’ risk of institutionalisation and to explore the link between types of social care support and carer outcomes. This consists of quantitative analyses of area - and individual - level data on patterns of carer support. We will also examine whether the implementation of the Care Act 2014 is linked with changes in local level carer support and the extent of variation between local authorities.
4. Issuing a third wave of the longitudinal survey originally designed for the Working Carers study (REF) and conducting follow-on semi-structured interviews with a sample of carers.
Further project information
Principal Investigator: Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez
CPEC Research team: Nicola Brimblecombe, Dr Jackie Damant (Project Coordinator), Professor Martin Knapp, Tom Snell
Collaborators: Professor Jill Manthorpe and Jo Moriarty, Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London
Countries: England
Keywords: Unpaid care, carers, Care Act
Contact
Jose-Luis Fernandez
j.fernandez@lse.ac.uk