Push and pull: doctors deciding to leave the UK for New Zealand

Posted on November 3, 2014 by

Stephen Martineau is a researcher at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. (670 words)

The Social Care Workforce Research Unit (SCWRU) last week hosted a lecture by Robin Gauld of the University of Otago, New Zealand. Professor Gauld, who is 2014 NZ-UK Link Foundation Visiting Professor, presented new research (done with Dr Simon Horsburgh) on the migration of medical professionals from the UK to New Zealand. Audience members, who included the High Commissioner of New Zealand and the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s, also heard formal responses from Stephen Bach (Dept of Management at King’s) and Jill Manthorpe, Director of SCWRU. Continue reading →

The challenges of medical workforce migration between the UK and New Zealand

Posted on October 17, 2014 by

On 29 October 2014 the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s hosts a seminar examining workforce migration in health and social care (places still available). Prof Jill Manthorpe, Director of the Unit, is joined by Prof Stephen Bach, Department of Management at King’s: they will be the formal respondents to a presentation given by Professor Robin Gauld who is the 2014 NZ-UK Link Foundation Visiting Professor. Here, Robin Gauld introduces his work, which focuses on health workforce migration between New Zealand and the UK. (531 words)

The week of 6 October saw significant media coverage in the UK of the 2014 State of Medical Education and Practice report by the General Medical Council. This indicated that around half of all migrating doctors are departing for the shores of Australia and New Zealand. One newspaper summed it up as: ‘…They cost us £610,000 to train – but 3,000 a year are leaving us for a life in the sun…‘. Continue reading →

Towards a new national learning disability employment strategy

Posted on September 29, 2014 by

Stephen Martineau is a researcher at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit in the Policy Institute at King’s. (782 words)

There is a flurry of policy activity in the field of learning disabilities and employment at the moment. Last Wednesday’s Summit on the topic, hosted by the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD) in Birmingham, followed close on the heels of a run of associated consultation events. Led by a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servant, with the Department of Health (DH) also in the room, the focus of the meeting was a new national learning disability employment strategy. This is to be in final draft form by November, with a set of four learning and sharing events to follow, and sign-off by Mark Harper, Minister for Disabled People, expected in January 2015. Other indications that the topic of learning disabilities is ‘hot’ in Whitehall and Westminster, as DWP’s Simon Francis asserted on the day, include: the recent appointment of a Special Educational Needs Tsar (Lee Scott MP); the revamp of the GOV.UK website for potential employers of people with learning disabilities; and, a commitment to put much more of the information in this domain into easy read format.

It is too early to say much about the new employment strategy for people with learning disabilities in detail. The talk is of opening up a new funding stream, but quite what shape this will take (and whether, for example, it will entail new pilots)—this isn’t being discussed openly yet. Continue reading →

The challenges of mental health for social science and policy

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Stephen Martineau

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 →

Sequeli welcomes the First Annual Report of the National Panel of Independent Experts on Serious Case Reviews

Posted on August 15, 2014 by

Sequeli is a social enterprise not-for-profit limited company which provides training for chairs of mental health investigations, domestic homicide reviews, children’s Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) and adult safeguarding SCRs. The First Annual Report of the National Panel of Independent Experts on Serious Case Reviews was published last month. Here, Gillian Downham, Sequeli‘s founder and Director, addresses the issue of the effectiveness of SCRs (and the training associated with them) that is raised in the Report. (652 words)

As Director of Sequeli, I have worked hard for over a year developing courses, seminars and training materials for the Department for Education’s (DfE) ‘Improving the Quality of Serious Case Reviews’ training programme. It has been a pleasure to work with experienced colleagues, among them members of the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London, as well as the NSPCC and Action for Children. I have been steeped in the subject. So not surprisingly I have a few comments on the Panel’s first Annual Report.

Firstly, this is a very welcome Report. It is good to see the Expert Panel have been so assertive on the initiation of children’s SCRs (suspecting that alternatives to SCRs are on many occasions ‘proposed as a way of evading publication’) and publication of SCR reports. The need for independence, thoroughness, openness and proportionality has been the bedrock of the Sequeli approach and at the centre of the DfE training. It is heartening to see these mentioned throughout the Annual Report. Continue reading →

Looked after children and offending: reducing risk and promoting resilience

Posted on August 11, 2014 by

In this guest post, Gareth Crossman, Executive Director of Policy, Communications and Fundraising at TACT, a fostering and adoption charity, highlights research done with the University of East Anglia on the topic of looked after children and offending. (371 words)

In 2010, TACT and the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Research on the Child and Family were awarded a research grant by the Big Lottery Fund. This funded a major project examining the relationship between children in care and the criminal justice system. One hundred young people, along with local authorities across England and Wales, took part in a series of detailed interviews and surveys. The aim was to investigate the factors that caused young people in care to be at risk of entry into the criminal justice system. And, crucially, what were the factors that could promote resilience and help keep them away from criminalisation.

Young people in care are often stereotyped as likely to become criminals. There is no doubt that statistics about prison populations show disproportionate numbers of people who have experienced being in care. However, nine out of ten young people who go into care will never come into contact with the police. The research bore out what TACT’s own experience told us; that when the care system works well it can prove hugely effective in keeping young people out of the criminal justice system. However, negative experiences can lead to greatly enhanced prospects of criminalisation. Continue reading →

Risks and barriers to organisations conducting research

Posted on July 18, 2014 by

by Martin Stevens, Senior Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. (2,114 words)

The Health Research Authority (HRA) is currently consulting on various aspects of research regulation in health and social care in preparation for replacing the Research Governance Framework (RGF). The Social Care Workforce Research Unit (SCWRU) has had a long involvement with the implementation of Research Governance in social care and has made a response to part of this consultation. The HRA is currently asking ‘What are the risks to research because of perceived risks of research? and has published a report explaining its proposed approach. There is much with which we agree in the consultation report, specifically:

the focus on clear and consistent definitions of terms;
the emphasis on collaboration;
the promotion of sound arrangements between the different organisations involved in research;
the promotion of a quality research culture, within research organisations and also in care organisations; and,
the need for more explicit support for a high quality research culture.

However, despite the focus on good collaboration and the need to involve all stakeholders, the document needs to better reflect the experiences of social care researchers, and those responsible for research governance in local authorities. Continue reading →

Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) – the way forward for adult social care

Posted on July 16, 2014 by

by Caroline Norrie, Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London. (952 words)

Professionals working in the adult social care field gathered at Friends House in Euston, London, on 30 June 2014 to share knowledge and experiences of Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP). MSP was initiated by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) and the Local Government Association (LGA) as a sector-led response to concerns that adults at risk are not being involved in investigations and decisions when councils have concerns about abuse or neglect (adult safeguarding).

Supported by funding from Department of Health (DH) and the LGA, this improvement programme started in 2011/12 with the development of a toolkit. In 2012/13 five pilot councils signed up to the scheme and this year 53 councils participated. The programme has been given increased funding to continue next year across further English councils. Continue reading →

Where next for integration and funding?

Posted on July 7, 2014 by

John Woolham

Martin Stevens

It is estimated that the NHS faces a shortfall of at least £30 billion a year within a decade and possibly a deficit as high as £50 billion. Martin Stevens of King’s and John Woolham of Coventry University report on an event last month where experts debated funding and integration in health and social care. (1,369 words)

At a SSRG–SSCR event on Integration and Funding of Health and Social Care held at the LSE on 18 June José-Luis Fernandez of LSE opened with a statistical review of the decline of social care service provision since the 1980s, which had become especially marked since 2008-09 with the contraction in public spending—despite increases in the numbers of older people over this period. While this could in small part be due to better targeting and more effective services, his conclusion was that there was a great deal of unmet need in the community. Continue reading →

Health & Social Care Workforce:

Welcome to the blog of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce at King's College London