What are we trying to do?

This reasearch project aims to explore the impact of COVID-19 on adult social care and social work services in England, initially focussing on Greater Manchester with a view to extending some elements of the work to other regions in future.

 

As part of this work we are exploring and understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on practitioners and organisations providing social work and social care to adults, whilst looking to describe and measure the medium and long term effects of acute and unexpected changes in the legislative, policy and work environment on social care, including:

 

• Strategy
• Organisations
• Practice and service delivery
• Staff
• People with lived experience

 

 

Why is it important?

The COVID-19 pandemic has made increasing demands on the adult social care sector whose remit, scope and forms of service delivery are complex.

 

Understanding the acute, medium and long-term effects of and responses to COVID-19 will help to inform decision making and optimise organisational responses to further waves of the disease, and mitigate any negative long-term effects on organisations, adult social work and social care staff and services.

 

Equally, this resreach will look to identify positive gains in terms of working practices and innovation in service delivery, stimulated by current working conditions, and the actions required to sustain them.

 

 

How are we doing it?

In this study we are adopting a mixed-methods approach, including:

 

• A scoping review
• An initial online survey - asking questions atound strategy, organisation, practice, social demography, ethnicity, work demography, work related factors (burnout, sickness absence); and COVID-19 related factors.
• Analysing routinely collected Greater Manchester adult social care data - looking at at workforce vacancies, referral numbers, response times, statutory assessment/review processes, expenditure data and social care-related quality of life to look at patterns of service demand and response, service delivery changes, economic, resource and workforce impacts as well as additional COVID-19  specific data
• A qaualitative sinvestigation - involving semi-structured interviews with peopele who completed the initial survey and a number of leaders and managers of social work and social care organisations
• A second online survey - informed and refined by the initial survey responses, secondary data analysis and qualitative analysis to capture data from individuals who did not complete the initial survey.

 

As part of out analysis we are using standardised and laidares measures such as:

 

• Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (SWEMBS) to assess global wellbeing.
• EuroQol (EQ-5D-5L) scale to assess health across 5 domains
• General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12) as a screening assessment for minor mental health problems.

 

 

Who are we working with?

• National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research (SSCR) in Manchester
• The GM Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP)
• The Greater Manchester Social Work Academy (GMSWA)
• NIHR ARC Greater Manchester -  Mental Health Theme
• Regional Public Health colleagues - Public Health England and Department of Health and Social Care
• The Thomas Ashton Institute
• Social Work, University of Manchester
• Regional service user and carer partners: Adult Principal Social Workers Network and Skills for Care

 

 

How is the work funded?

The work is funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research (SSCR)

 

 

Downloadable resources

 

More information

 

 

 

 

Programme Manager
 

Gill Rizzello
gill.rizzello@manchester.ac.uk