Useful resources

There are some really good examples of innovative models of health, social care and support for adults across the country. However, the challenge is to scale up these primarily small-scale, community-focused successes so that as many people benefit from them as possible.

This was studied in detail in a report by SCIE, Nesta and Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) with recommendations for a government-funded network to support this work. The Social Care Innovation Network will enable innovative local authorities and partners to test new ideas and share learning with others.

TLAP has a growing directory of innovative models of health and social care to support adults. Commissioners, providers and people with lived experience can use it to find out about good practice locally and nationally.

SCIE and TLAP have already published resources on innovation in social care. As the Network grows and produces more, we will add to the resources here.

Innovation in social care

There are a number of other SCIE resources on how innovative, small-scale models of health, social care and support could be scaled up to improve support to adults and children.

Asset-based area

TLAP has extensive resources on asset-based areas – where the focus is on people’s and communities’ assets, alongside their needs – and approaches to create them.

Strength-based approaches

Innovative strengths-based approaches (SBA) or asset-based approaches focus on individuals’ strengths (including personal strengths and social and community networks) and not on their deficits. The approach is holistic and multidisciplinary and works with the individual to promote their wellbeing. These resources describe how SBAs work in a variety of interventions and settings and provides information on how to enable and implement them.

Empowering communities

TLAP’s resources offer a compelling case for working collaboratively to create strong and empowered communities, and argue that this needs to be central to the transformation of the health and care sector.

More from TLAP

Learning from elsewhere