John Woolham is Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. (637 words)
I was invited to speak last month at a seminar organised by the School for Social Care Research (SSCR) at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). The purpose of the event was to ‘showcase’ research SSCR have funded over the last couple of years and to further cement links between researchers and policy-makers. Continue reading
Nigel Charles is a health services researcher at the University of Exeter Medical School. He also has Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and draws on his experience of this to suggest a patient informed research study about using statistics to help patients deal with the emotional impact of cancer. (1,418 words)
I’m in a club no one wants to be in. The Cancer Club. This post is about a hunch I have about how to handle being a member of this club and the need for this to be researched. I’m also waving the flag for patients shaping the research agenda.
I was diagnosed with an aggressive variety of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma—a type of blood cancer—in October 2016. (Indeed, I write this on the day of the anniversary of my first hospital admission which led to the diagnosis. Happy Birthday.) The haematologists who specialise in the treatment of NHL found a cricket ball sized tumour buried deep inside my abdomen. Surgery was needed to stop it blocking my bowel but subsequent chemotherapy hasn’t worked. We have yet to see if the next and last available option—radiotherapy—will. Continue reading
Gaia Cetrano is a Research Associate at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King’s College London. (1,100 words)
In May this year I was proud to take part in the first conference organized by the new Italian Society of Social Work Research (SOCISS) in Turin, Italy.
The origins of SOCISS date back to 1983 when a group of teachers of social work founded the Italian Association of Teachers of Social Work (AIDOSS). AIDOSS assiduously worked over 30 years to develop common thinking on theories of social work, as well as on the organization of university curricula, and the role of training and research. Then what happened? The Association committee reunited in 2016 and approved a new constitution outlining its new objectives, which included strengthening the dialogue between theory and practice in social work and promoting social work research in Italy and internationally. I think it is very important that the status of the association has now changed to that of a scientific society as this will hopefully help professionals, researchers and academics to acquire a stronger voice and also be in a better position to communicate and negotiate with other disciplines. Continue reading
Valerie Lipman is a Postdoc Intern at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s College London.
Here’s a challenge for learning institutes in the UK: how can they deliver on-site direct services for the vulnerable groups whom they’re studying and promoting? I talked to Dr Indrani Chakravarty, the founder and Director, of the Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology (CMIG) about her experience of doing just this and how she marries research with real practice. Continue reading
Jo Moriarty and Martin Stevens are Senior Research Fellows at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. (1,192 words)
People often talk about the absence of a social care evidence base, but ‘patchy’ is a far better description. Until we ar
e more explicit about this, it will be difficult to make progress in achieving evidence based policy and practice. We took part in two Meet the Researcher sessions at an event jointly organised by Research in Practice for Adults (RIPfA), the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS). They were part of a day-long seminar designed to bring Directors and Assistant Directors of Adult Social Care and researchers together to discuss current and future adult social care research. Continue reading
The adult social work sector in England needs to urgently identify its key research priorities, in an inclusive and rigorous way, if it is to generate the ideas and evidence needed to ensure that people receive the best possible support, according to researchers at the Policy Institute, King’s College London.
In a discussion paper on the state of social work research with adults in England, the researchers stress that the profession needs to be underpinned by research if it is to survive and to flourish. Among their recommendations are the establishment of a network that provides learning and mentor support for early career researchers, practitioner researchers, and managers interested in adult social work research, something that currently exists for researchers working on subjects such as ageing or in health services research. Continue reading
Peer research is a distinct type of service user involvement extending the expertise of lived experience into research. In peer research people with direct experience are involved in designing, delivering and shaping research (Revolving Doors, 2016).The Homelessness Research Programme at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit is currently running two research projects involving peer researchers. The first is looking at specialist primary care and the second at hospital discharge arrangements for homeless people. Both projects recently ran training and induction days for their peer researchers. In this blog James Fuller and Alan Kilmister (Peer Researchers on the Hospital Discharge Project) describe how they became involved in peer research, how their experience can make a difference and why striving for impact and change must be at the heart of this kind of participatory methodology. (1,372 words)
James: I am currently working as a support worker in a ‘day centre’ for homeless people in London. The main motive for throwing myself into the hospital discharge research project is a strong sense of righteous indignation at the way the people who use our service are routinely returned there by hospital staff who should know we have no accommodation – the clue is in our title!
One man has been delivered to our car park three times this year, on two occasions in a taxi, always clutching his transparent bag of medicines and still wearing his ward wristband. All we can do is get him to see our wonderful specialist nurse at the earliest opportunity (she can only fit us in one day a week) and use our best first-aiding to tend any wounds.
In the dark days I was myself discharged from hospital detox onto the street, which meant I couldn’t access even daytime rehabs, not having a secure address in what had been my local borough for more than five years. I was back in detox six months later. In the interim I was put out of the Emergency Investigation Unit of a well-known London hospital in pretty short order and with nowhere to go. Such experiences stick in the mind. Continue reading
Caroline Norrie (left) and Michelle Cornes are, respectively, Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. (666 words)
A Transformative Research Fund grant has been awarded to researchers from the Social Care Workforce Research Unit (SCWRU) at King’s College London to pilot an educational drama initiative in a care home in Cumbria. Care home staff, multi-agency colleagues (such as GPs and physiotherapists) and residents will hopefully volunteer to take part in a drama called Let’s Talk, which is designed to stimulate discussion about working relationships. As well as piloting the drama, three interprofessional, reflective ‘Community of Practice’ (CoP) meetings will be held which will act as a forum to discuss care home practices and ideas for change. Continue reading
Katharine Orellana is a Research Training Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. Katharine’s Care Home Managers: a scoping review of evidence is published today by NIHR School for Social Care Research. (589 words)We have a tendency to put care home managers at the back of our minds until a crisis hits the headlines. On such sad occasions, there is suddenly a lot of interest in them.
In England, around 460,000 adults live in 17,350 care homes that have a staff body of around 560,000. Care homes are hugely varied in many ways. They range from small, family businesses to large national and multinational chains offering anything from 1 – 215 beds. Homes may cater for more than one group of people, but they all provide accommodation and personal care. Just over a quarter of them also offer nursing, and these account for about half of all places in care homes as they tend to be larger operations. Staff must support residents with increasingly complex needs. Continue reading
Guntars Ermansons, student in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, introduces a report on a workshop held earlier this summer. See the full report of the workshop. (309 words)
On 19 June 2014, a workshop on “The Challenges of Mental Health for Social Science and Policy” was held at King’s College London, Waterloo Campus. Supported by the King’s Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Centre’s Science & Society initiative and organized by the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, in collaboration with the Institute of Psychiatry and Social Care Workforce Research Unit, the workshop hosted a number of distinguished speakers and experts on mental health and involved postgraduate and early career researchers. Continue reading