Title: Adult social care partnership: _x000D_ Using co-production methods to build and evaluate a regional capacity building network to facilitate greater understanding use and production of research in adult social care.
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Governments support the delivery of services informed by evidence of what works. This should ensure they provide good outcomes for people who need services. Social care is less experienced in finding and using evidence to inform services and there are far fewer people who work in social care doing research compared with the health sector. This happens for a number of reasons. People who work in social care get little research training and funding for research has been limited. The organisation of social care is complicated, less well understood and has less support for research. _x000D_ Social care is provided by over 1.5 million individuals through over 40,000 organised units in England, with much of it delivered by private businesses or not for profit providers. Most people working in social care do not have professional qualifications, and around 6.5 million family and other unpaid carers make enormous contributions to caring for people. While more than 800,000 adults receive local authority-funded social care many people pay for their own care, as unlike health, social care is means tested. The vast majority of these people do not regularly access research to help them choose services. _x000D_ This application proposes a Network made up of partners from the public, people who work in adult social care and universities to help prioritise important areas for research and then support the people within the network to conduct high quality research on important and relevant questions identified by those who know the services. We propose to start by looking at the area of older people as this is what the majority of money is spent on in social care services._x000D_ We will evaluate the activity of the Network using ra framework that has been shown to work well when trying to build confidence and skills in research for some health services. This will also allow us to measure how successful our Network is at supporting greater collaboration and more use and production of research. _x000D_ The network will have a number of linked strands starting with identifying some immediate priorities to focus on. Smaller groups will then come up with ideas to solve problems and test them helping to get best practice out into social care more widely. Each local authority partner will have a Research Champion who will help to make sure research is supported and to help to build a more research confident community. We will provide learning and training opportunities working with other parts of the Institute for health Research helping researchers, social care employees and the public to mix and learn from each other. We will also ensure the network communicates internally and with people outside the network using a specially designed website as well as using events and other social media. All of this will be monitored to make sure it is delivering as promised. _x000D_ The team are a mixture of people from both Universities and Local Authorities and the public with many different skills. Some relationships already exist but we are confident we are able to address the skills needed for this network by providing research leadership, knowledge of social care, knowledge of what it takes to build skills and confidence and to make an impact for citizens. We have strong initial support for public engagement from Involvement@York and the strong partnership s that already exist in the local authorities. This will continue through a participatory approach led by two expert co-applicants.

Lay abstract: Using research evidence judiciously within local authority (LA) commissioning and policy-setting offers decision-makers greater access to information on what works, increases opportunities for effective use of increasingly scarce resources, and improves certainty around the likelihood of success when implementing new interventions. In the UK and elsewhere there is increasing focus on understanding and implementation of EBP in social care practice. _x000D_ There may be valuable lessons that can be translated from the context of heath however a number of factors make it important to explore how research uptake and capacity building works in social care might differ. Social care policy is set nationally, but interpreted, shaped and implemented in 152 locally elected councils. Social care in particular faces many challenges, in part because its delivery and funding are complex; delivered by countless individuals and over 40,000 establishments it is mostly dominated by private sector organisations. About 90 per cent of the formal social care workforce are not professionally qualified, and around 6.5 million family and other unpaid carers also support social care. The result is considerably wider variation in social care practice than in health care. Embedding research consistently throughout practice is challenging as social care is less familiar with research and has fewer opportunities than healthcare to engage with an evidence base, both in training and practice._x000D_ The applicants propose the establishment of a regional research network (initially prioritising older adults as an area of greatest need and spend within LAs). We will employ a participatory approach with embedded evaluation to:_x000D_ -facilitate increased confidence in and ownership of evidence creation_x000D_ -identify research priorities and research capacity issues _x000D_ -identify solutions for production, implementation and translation of knowledge _x000D_ -build a sustainable research infrastructure within social care in a region with acute need and high inequalities._x000D_ The Network is grounded in a theory based Research Capacity Development for Impact RCDi) Framework developed and published over a number of years by one of the co-applicants (Cooke). Using co-production/ participatory methods between public, practice and academic contributors the network will identify shared priorities, form communities of practice, establish a Social Care Academy and embed local research leadership models underpinned by a bespoke on line platform to support engagement and impact. _x000D_ An embedded evaluation using realist principles will test the mechanism of the RCDi Framework within our 4 participating LA settings examining context-mechanism outcome chains, where the outcome of one mechanism stimulates another within the architecture of the network. Supported evaluators in residence will collect data corresponding to the seven areas of the detailed work plan to determine the extent to which research is embedding into practice and practice into research, local leadership development, sustainability and impact._x000D_ We will contribute to local and national debates around embedding of EBP within social care; exploring how partnerships within research can inform and deliver excellent services as well as contributing to knowledge production on co-production methods to support growth engagement with and conduct of research while developing capacity and funding within our region.

Research activity codes: 8.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (HEALTH SERVICES)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE