Report 69 published by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in November 2014. This research, commissioned by the Department of Health (DH), set out to identify what could be learned about current policy and practice in self-neglect, experienced as a highly challenging aspect of contemporary adult social care.
Fiona Sherwood-Johnson believes that it is helpful to think of adult support and protection as something that’s constructed – that is, as something that policy and legislation have a hand in constructing, and something that gets continually re-constructed on the ground. She is blogging on Research Unbound to share her thoughts and ideas on ASP.
Report of a short-term scoping project to explore how social work service practitioners might be better equipped to understand the perspectives of people who may be at risk of harm and to identify ways to improve service user participation in investigations, decision-making and meetings.
Report that details the results of an online survey of NHS trust finance directors carried out between 22 November 2013 and 6 December 2013.
230 trust finance directors were contacted to take part and 79 responded (34 per cent response rate).
Review that introduces one approach to modelling and simulation, System Dynamics, which can bring potential benefits and insights. Examples of its use in the health sector are cited, and its possible relevance to social care discussed.
The review introduces some generic building blocks for representing populations, services, human resources, and finance, and outlines a possible methodology, group model building, as an approach that uses simulation to enhance thinking and learning.
Report that documents people's lived experience and imagined futures. It shares people's stories and ideas for new kinds of caring - caring that moves beyond servicing basic needs to enabling great living in late adulthood, be that having love-ins, eating lobster, or racing cars.
The Social Policy Research Unit examined how current English adult social care practice balances the interests of service users and family carers, in assessment, planning, on-going management and reviews of personal budgets, particularly when budget-holders have cognitive or communication impairments.
The study examined senior local authority perspectives, everyday practice by frontline staff and experiences of service users and carers.
The idea behind this story was to find a way to describe an arts project that involved an artist, an informatics specialist and a man with a liking for music. The man in question had a learning disability, a sight impairment and physical disability, which meant he was reliant on others choosing what he listened to. Artist Steve Hollingsworth began creating a sound system which could be operated with one simple hand movement, enabling the man to select what he felt like listening to from a library of sounds.
Report designed to support sector-led improvement. It aims to:
The care and support White Paper, Caring for our future, says: "Social workers have a crucial role to play in the reformed care and support system". The College of Social Work agrees, but believes that in a climate of austerity social work must be able to show not just that it makes a unique contribution to the lives of service users but that it makes financial sense too.
This discussion paper indicates where social workers fit into modern models of care and sketches the outlines of an argument that the cost-benefit analysis comes out in their favour.