9 January 2023

By Dr Wenjing Zhang – Researcher in Residence at Kent Research Partnership

We have reached the half-year milestone for the launch and first meetings of Kent Research Partnership’s two Communities of Practice (COPs)!

• • • Supporting people with complex needs throughout the lifespan
    • Enhancing, diversifying and sustaining the social care workforce

These two COPs have been co-designed and shaped by people who have experience with adult social care in Kent, including public members, family carers, people who access social care, and those working in the sector.

Following Lilly’s blog in May on the launch of two COPs and the introduction of the one on “Supporting people with complex needs throughout the lifespan”, this blog looks back to what happened at the Workforce COP in the last six months.

Progress so far

The workforce COP has successfully brought together people who have different expertise but a shared goal, where we share best practice, research and learning under the broader topic of “enhancing, diversifying and sustaining the social care workforce”. In the past six months’ Workforce COP meetings, we have had informative talks and fruitful discussions. We greatly appreciate our speakers who have brought their professional, frontline, research and lived experience and expertise to the community:

• Pia Rathje-Burton, Skills for Care locality manager covering Kent and Medway.
• Lyn Gallimore, a member of our lived experience working group and an active volunteer for Healthwatch.
• Collette Thornton, Business Development Manager, Cartref Homes.
• Stephen Allan, Senior Research Fellow, Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent.
• Isabelle Latham, Researcher in Residence, Hallmark Care Homes.
• John Potts, public engagement and lay representative for the Kent Research Partnership, co-lead of our lived experience working group.
• Sophie Fournel, CEO, Disability Assist.
• Lara Bywater, Director, LDC Care Co & Board Director, Kent Integrated Care Alliance (KiCA).

Our speakers talked about many topics around the social care workforce in Kent, including recruitment and retention in adult social care, workforce data, career development pathways, support for care workers, what we can do to make working in social care more attractive for young people, experience and expectations from social care practitioners, research in care homes, and how research findings inform practice and policy making. All our COP members have made significant contributions to the discussions and further networking and collaboration. You can find more details about these talks and meetings from our online platform, Glasscubes (email KentResearchPartnership@kent.ac.uk to join).

What’s next?

Communities of Practice support knowledge sharing and practice improvement. We are learning together and from each other via these COP meetings and online discussions. With supporting research capacity building of social care workforce as our key focus, Kent Research Partnership will fund and support several social care practitioners to conduct a research and training fellowship and some pilot research projects in the upcoming months. Practitioner fellows will be actively involved in the COPs and share their research ideas, progress, findings and impact with our COP members. As a member of the COPs, you will also oversee and support these pilot research initiatives in adult social care research in Kent.

There will also be other collaboration opportunities coming up in our COP. So please keep coming to our meetings and discussions, and watch out for news on Glasscubes.

Interested in joining our Communities of Practice?

If you are interested in joining us, it’s never too late. All you need to do is drop us a line to get added to the mailing list: KentResearchPartnership@kent.ac.uk

If you are interested or intrigued, but you are not sure if it is for you, please come along to see what it is all about – we need everyone with an interest to bring ideas from a range of roles and experiences relevant to adult social care in Kent. The next meetings of each CoP will take place in January 2023 – please register on Eventbrite to join!

Enhancing, diversifying and sustaining social care workforce: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/473258297307

Supporting People with Complex Needs throughout the Lifespan: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/january-meeting-communities-of-practice-complex-needs-tickets-473288738357

Views: 410

4 October 2022

By John Potts

Having spent my main working life in IT in the private sector working on this exciting project is a very different and challenging experience especially in this new virtual world. A new culture and a set of very different working practices have been learnt and become the norm. 

What do I bring to the Project? In my main employment 2 of the greatest challenges were changing the work culture to meet the needs of retail and other users with 7 x 24 working and being responsible for measuring customer satisfaction and acting upon the results. As you can see like today’s challenges in Social Care. My introduction to Care followed my involvement with our local Patient Participation Group, and subsequent membership of the Kent County Council People’s Panel, which led to the opportunity to join this Project. 

My role in the project as a joint applicant is all about ensuring public engagement and undertaking the role of lay representative. As a member of the main team, I have a voice in all areas and will always ensure the public are a key part of our working with co-production being addressed at all levels. 

We have now completed our first year and have in place all key members of the team, together with our lived experience working group of 12 members. We are very aware of the need to have representation from users, providers, and carers across a broad section of geography and demographics.  

We are now entering the real challenge: to start addressing the two topics of workforce and managing complex needs through our communities of practice. Our approach is to use the experience of our working group, together with care providers, practitioners,  support services and researchers, to gain a true understanding of the problems. We are also offering some fully funded Research and Training Fellowships to assist with this task in addition to our Researchers in Residence. 

An interesting by-product of the project was that we were invited to produce a paper on our views of the “Invisibility of Social care” to a House of Lords Select committee on Adult Social Care. We await their response. 

We are always looking for new members of our Communities of Practice so if you believe you have the experience and time to join us, please send your details to:  KentResearchPartnership@kent.ac.uk  

Follow us on Twitter: @ResearchKent  

Visit our website: www.pssru.ac.uk/kascp/ 

Views: 80

27 May 2022

By Lilly Trapp – Research Facilitator at Kent Research Partnership

Since the Kent Research Partnership launched in June 2021, we have been engaging with people who really know the adult social care sector – those who use services, carers, and the social care workforce – and asking them about their priorities for social care research in Kent.

One of my main motivations for joining the Kent Research Partnership was that I am a former homecare worker and, although I loved the role, I was often a bit frustrated that I didn’t seem to learn much about research and good practice outside my team or organisation, and also that other people seemed to have such a limited view of all that a social care career offers. I am, therefore, really excited that our Communities will be exploring both practice and people-focused research topics.

In March, we held our third networking event, bringing together everything we’ve heard over the past nine months to finalise and launch our two Communities of Practice:

1. Supporting people with complex needs throughout the lifespan
2. Enhancing, diversifying and sustaining the social care workforce

(If you missed the event, you can catch up here.)

Supporting people with complex needs throughout the lifespan

Many themes related to supporting people with diverse, evolving and complex needs came up at our first two networking events, whether that is the importance of good transitions between services, or how best to support those with Autism. All of these have been brought together under the umbrella – or ‘roof’ – of ‘supporting people with complex needs throughout the lifespan’.

We hope that the broad, overarching theme will be inclusive of a variety of interests, while more specific themes and sub-groups will emerge as the ‘rooms’ of the house. The importance of ensuring that the communities are inclusive, intentionally intersectional, and that they follow a genuinely co-produced approach came through very strongly at our networking events. Instead of making these into standalone communities focusing on diversity or co-production, these principles – along with that of a practice-oriented approach – form the foundation stones underpinning both communities.

I’m really looking forward to supporting the complex needs community and seeing how the members work together to develop their wealth of exciting ideas into practical, influential research projects.

Interested in joining our Communities of Practice (CoPs)?

If you are interested in finding out more about how the CoPs will work in practice, why not come along to the first meetings taking place in June? The focus will be on agreeing expectations and ways of working, and starting to translate ideas into tangible actions.

Next month’s blog will provide more information about our second community of practice: Enhancing, diversifying and sustaining the social care workforce. In the meantime, please feel free to register your interest for either or both CoPs here:

The first meetings of each CoP will take place in June – please register on Eventbrite to join!

Enhancing, diversifying and sustaining social care workforce: Wed, 8 June 2022 at 12:30 – 14:00 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/community-of-practice-social-care-workforce-in-kent-tickets-332888106287

Supporting People with Complex Needs throughout the Lifespan: Wed, 22 June 2022 at 12:30 – 14:00 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/community-of-practice-complex-needs-throughout-lifespan-tickets-335560308917

Views: 164

18 March 2022

By Gina Walton – Senior Project Manager, Kent County Council

In the 14 years that I have worked in social care I have seen a shift in the focus of research, although we are still on our journey to embed a research culture. I have worked with a number of social care practitioners with an interest in research that actively engage with research activities and others that hear the word and think academic studies and switch off from the topic. Our aim through capacity building in Adult Social Care research is to show that research can come in many shapes and sizes. It can be used to evaluate a service, increase knowledge for decision makers and create a awareness for staff.

Not only does research provide an opportunity for people working in social care including the care sector to use evidence and research to inform complex judgements and decisions needed to support, empower and protect people, it also improves staff experience and professional development, helping with recruitment and retention of social workers.

National Focus

“Robust research evidence is a vital component of good planning and decision making in social work. It sits alongside other knowledge to provide, for example, evidence of what works best in given circumstances. Good research evidence can drive reflective practice, continuous quality improvement and innovation” [1]

Research has been a long-standing priority for the Chief Social worker for Adults (England), Lyn Romeo, who commissioned a project to establish the research priorities for adult social work using the long-established James Lind Alliance (JLA) approach. Practitioners, people using services and their carers responded to two surveys and a priority setting workshop to establish the final Top Ten research priorities. Although a diverse range of issues and themes for adult social work were identified, many of the priorities asked about the impact of policies on social work practice, and importantly, the outcomes for people using services.

This was the first time that the JLA approach had been used in a non-health related area. Since then, a similar James Lind priority setting exercise has been commissioned by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists [2]. Given their significant input into adult social care, strategies aiming to inform, guide and direct the development of research capability and capacity in the occupational therapy profession in the UK are welcomed by health and adult social care alike. 

What are we doing in Kent

In addition to the building research capacity, in Kent we have created a research group to help embed a research culture. The group aims to:

• Have oversight of all Adult Social Care research activity.
• Review all external research requests, to ensure that they are strategically aligned and consider operational implications.
• Track all research projects and ensure we consider the learning and apply into practice.
• Shape research communications to keep the workforce informed and engaged.
• Work with partners to share learning and seek research opportunities.
• Consider career research opportunities for the workforce and how these opportunities are promoted and supported.
• Understand what research activity is happening in Adult Social Care, celebrate and share the work of our workforce.
• Work with local universities to inform student research projects.
• Design and deliver research events.
• Created a network research network with partners in the county (health, children’s social care, health) to collaborate and identify joint opportunities. 

We are very excited about the opportunities building research capacity in adult social care will create as research matters in so many ways.

The author

Gina Walton is a Senior Project Manager in the Innovation Delivery Team, Adult Social Care and Health at Kent County Council. She co-leads the Kent Research Partnership with Ann-Marie Towers.

References

1. Department of Health and Social Care. Priorities for Adult Social Work Research Results from the James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership for Adult Social Work. London UK, 2018.
2. Royal College of Occupational Therapists, James Lind Alliance. Identifying Research Priorities for Occupational Therapy in the UK. What Matters Most to the People Accessing and Delivering Services? London UK, 2021.

Views: 209

1 February 2022

By Ann-Marie Towers

As part of its commitment to capacity building in adult social care research, the NIHR has funded six social care partnerships in England. These capacity building partnerships have significant potential to improve the quality and quantity of social care research, by working with local authorities, practitioners, providers (all sectors) and people with lived experience to identify strategic research priorities and develop proposals from the grass-roots.

The Kent Research Partnership started in June 2021 and is led by the University of Kent and Kent County Council, with collaborators from the University of Brighton, Kent Integrated Care Alliance, The Home Care Association and  the National Care Forum. The partnership is supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey and Sussex, the NIHR Clinical Research Network Kent, Surrey and Sussex and a working group of members of the public with lived experience of adult social care, led by our lay co-applicant Mr John Potts.

Our capacity-building model

We have chosen a regional focus for our capacity building partnership, meaning we will be working closely with social care colleagues in Kent. However, we will draw on the networks of our collaborators, and strong links with the other social care partnerships, to facilitate knowledge sharing and impact across our region and the UK.

We are using a range of co-productive, research-in-practice methods to support capacity building, including developing communities of practice and embedding researchers within social care teams (the ‘researcher in residence’ model). These methods aim to provide the scaffolding needed to nurture and grow research ideas from the grass-roots.

Members of the Communities of Practice will be supported to develop research skills through free training workshops and research clinics run by the partnership team. From month 18, three ‘Research and Training Fellowships’ will be funded, to enable individuals working within social care to undertake research training and carry out pilot projects on adult social care priority areas. The fellowships will fund the successful applicants’ time and research costs. Fellows will receive support and mentorship from the wider project team throughout.

Getting involved

The best way to get involved in this work and be the first to hear about all the opportunities in our region is to join one or more of our Communities of Practice. Anyone working in adult social care in Kent is eligible to join. This includes people working for KCC and colleagues from the external workforce such as managers, care workers, activity coordinators and support workers. So if you manage or work in a local service and have not yet had your say, get in touch!

We are also keen to involve people who have lived experience of adult social care. By this we mean anyone who uses social care services and support or cares for someone who does. This is important to the research team and to the practitioners we have consulted so far.

If you are interested in finding out more, please email: KentResearchPartnership@kent.ac.uk and come along to our next engagement event on 29^th March 13.00-15.00 (online). Details will be made available on the News and events section of our website soon:

Cross-partnership working

The six partnerships have committed to working together to draw out recommendations for capacity building in other regions of England and countries in the UK.  Our first joint event will be a workshop at the Health Service Research UK conference 5 to 7 July 2022 in Sheffield. Online options are available for those unable to attend in person, so please register for a place and join our session to hear more.

For more information on the six partnerships, please follow these links:

Kent Research Partnership (University of Kent)

The Curiosity Partnership (University of York)

The SCRiPT study (Social Care Research in Practice Teams) (University of Hertfordshire)

Creating Care Partnerships (transforming-evidence.org)  (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

Connecting Evidence with Decision Making (ConnectED) (University of Bristol)

Peninsula Adult Social Care Research Collaborative (PARC)  (University of Plymouth)

Views: 2193