Practice into evidence into practice – the ongoing work of the NIHR School for Social Care Research

The National Institute for Health Research established the School for Social Care Research (SSCR) to increase the quantity of relevant world class research underway to provide a stronger evidence base for improving practice in adult social care in England. As SSCR approaches the half way point of its current 5 year contract, it is an apt moment for its Research Programme Manager Dr Michael Clark to reflect on progress thus far and consider priorities for its next 2.5 years.

With our Fourth Wave call for research bids closed and being processed we can see that all together we will have a portfolio of around 40 research projects commissioned through SSCR. This represents a considerable investment in social care research. Our projects span the priorities of practise and policy, including a diversity of client groups (including, people with mental health needs, people with learning disabilites, older people, people with physical health needs, and black and minority ethic communities), and across all of the 7 Pinciples (i.e. prevention, personalisation, partnership, plurality, protection, producitivity and people) of the Coalition government’s policy A vision for adult social care: Capable communities and active citizens. All our research calls and commissioned projects have been directly informed by practitioners and practice issues.

Colleagues have also been busy writing methods and scoping papers for the School, providing an overview of methodological and other topics in social care. These have included:

• Methods used in social care and related research about people with a visual impairment;
• An overview of outcome measurement;
• Sexualities in social care research;
• Qualitiative research methods;
• Research in care homes;
• Modelling in social care research;
• Procedures and practices in research governance and ethics for adult social care research;
• The use of large-scale datasets in social care research;
• Observational methods (focusing on learning disabilities);
• Research methods and d/Deaf people.

With more to come, these form a fabulous resource for researchers and those using research to improve social care practice. And all are free to access and use.

Of course, commissioning projects and papers is only part of the remit of SSCR. Our priorities for the next 2 and a half years include a focus on making an impact on improving practice by making use of all this commissioned work. 

We have identified ways to thematically cluster our projects to ensure ways to maximise the impact of the evidence from them as groups, rather than individual projects. Every project has a mentor from our Executive Group who’s role is to help us identify and plan for ways to disseminate our work and make it relevant and accessible to those working to improve practice.

The first 2 of the clusters of projects, on carers and on personalisation, have begun to meet and are planning public activities to help disseminate their work and identify ways to work with others to get the results in to improving practice. Look out for more work from the School in this area of impact on practice and quality improvement.

Achieving this work has involved many people linked to the School. We would particularly like to thank our Advisory Board and our Users, Carers and Practitioners Group. They have helped to steer the School and their work has reinforced the view that achieving our goal of improving practice will require the input of many different partners. We are always keen to work with other partners to achieve our shared goals, so if you like to know more about SSCR and get involved in our work, please sign up for our newsletters and contact us. We look forward to a busy, but very productive time ahead working with you all.

Contact SSCR
Email: sscr@lse.ac.uk
Telephone: 020-7955-6238