Social care and health inequalities
Healthy standard of living for all
SCIE Report 48: Mental health, employment and the social care workforce
This report summarises evidence on what prevents people with mental health problems from working or retaining work in social care and what can be done to enable them to work. It provides a summary of a range of policy and programmes designed to enable people with mental health problems to gain, retain and regain work, with specific focus on employment in social care.
SCIE Research briefing 38: Mental health, employment and the social care workforce
This briefing summarises evidence on what prevents people with mental health problems from working or retaining work in social care and what can be done to enable them to work. It provides a summary of a range of policy and programmes designed to enable people with mental health problems to gain, retain and regain work, with specific focus on employment in social care.
How effectively does the direct payments system work for people who lack the mental capacity to consent?
- To investigate the views of a range of stakeholders including staff who influence decisions about direct payments
- To explore the role played by 'suitable persons' who manage the direct payment of a person without capacity
- To gain insight into the experiences with direct payments of service users who lack capacity (especially people with learning disabilities or dementia)
- 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 (from School for Social Care Research website).
Joseph Rowntree Foundation: A minimum income standard for the UK in 2012
What income do people need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living?
Soaring childcare and transport costs plus cuts to tax credits mean families need to earn a third more post-recession to make ends meet.
JRF's annual update, based on what members of the public think people need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living.
This year's study involved 21 new focus groups, who 'rebased' minimum budgets for families with children through fresh research, and reviewed the budgets of other household types. It also reflects changes to costs and living standards, updating the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) budgets to April 2012.
This study extends the MIS UK research to consider what rural households need to afford the same standard of living as their urban counterparts. It examines:
- what different rural households need to meet the minimum income standard in comparison with urban households;
- how meeting needs in key areas of expenditure, such as transport and fuel, differs significantly in different types of location; and
- how much income people in rural areas therefore require in order to afford a minimum socially acceptable standard of living.
Projects funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research
The NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR) aims to increase the evidence-base for adult social care practice. The SSCR undertakes high-quality primary research and provides a focus for applied research in social care within the NIHR. The location of the School within the NIHR is recognition of the significant contribution that social care makes to the nation's health
Overcoming barriers: unpaid care and employment in England
- To review interventions to support carers in employment, focusing on support for the cared-for person
- To review current practice and innovations by local councils to support carers in employment
- To identify the relationships between unpaid care provision, employment status, health status and receipt of benefits, using large-scale survey data
- To carry out an initial economic evaluation of costs and savings of interventions
- To identify interventions that merit evaluation through further research.
- To describe current local policies and practices in English adult social care regarding the role of carers in the processes of personalisation
- 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
- To investigate the views of service users with CCIs and their carers on the roles they wish carers to play
- To identify potential issues and/or areas of tension between practitioners, service users and carers
- To recommend changes to the processes of personalisation so that they more accurately reflect the aspirations of service users and carers respectively.
Personalisation of home care for older people using managed personal budgets
- 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
- 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
- To indentify the factors in the behaviour of home care providers that affect their responses to changes in contracts and user demands
- 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.
Personalisation of services - a scoping study
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.