Adult Social Work PSP Protocol

Purpose of the PSP and background

The purpose of this protocol is to clearly set out the aims, objectives and commitments of the Adult Social Work Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) and the basic roles and responsibilities of the partners included. It is recommended that the Steering Group reviews the protocol and updates it on at least a quarterly basis.

The James Lind Alliance (JLA) is a non-profit making initiative, set up in 2004. It brings service users, carers and professionals together in Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs). These partnerships identify and prioritise uncertainties, or ‘unanswered questions’, about the effects of interventions that they agree are the most important. The aim of this is to help make sure that people who fund health and care research are aware of what really matters to service users, carers and professionals. The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR – www.nihr.ac.uk) funds the infrastructure of the JLA to manage the processes for Priority Setting Partnerships, based at the NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC), University of Southampton.

The Adult Social Work PSP was started by the Chief Social Worker for Adults in the Department of Health, in response to the 2016 report "Social Work the state we're in" by the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King's College. The report recommended that research priorities for adult social work are identified in an inclusive and rigorous way and acknowledged the James Lind Alliance process for being able to find research priorities from groups of interested people; establish clarity in the areas about which little is known and build agreement about what the most important research questions are.

Social workers provide vital services to children, adults, families and communities. Social workers help people find solutions to social and practical problems, access care and support, be safe from harm or neglect, exercise their human rights and get on with the lives they want to lead as much as possible. For social workers working with adults, this involves working with people, families and communities across a wide range of fields of practice, such as mental health, physical and learning disabilities, child protection, child and family support, conditions of older age, end of life care and physical illnesses.

Aims, objectives and scope of the PSP

The aim of the Adult Social Work PSP is to find out the unanswered questions about adult social work practice in England. To find these questions, the PSP will ask adults and people approaching adulthood who use or are in contact with adult social work services, their familiies and informal carers (including young carers), and registered social workers, student social workers and other health and social care professionals and managers. It will then prioritise the questions that these people agree are the most important.

The objectives of the Adult Social Work PSP are to:

• to identify research uncertainties about adult social work practice in England
• to agree a prioritised list of those uncertainties for research
• to announce the results of the PSP and the process used, to raise awareness and use of research and evidence by social workers and to help identify social work's contribution to wider health and care outcomes
• to take the list of the most important questions to people who fund health and care research to be considered for funding.

This PSP will focus on what social workers do to help adults who have care and support needs or are in contact with social workers for other reasons (for example, as family carer or as workers from other organisations). There may be questions about what is the most effective way of working with or assessing need. There may be questions about what improves wellbeing. There may also be questions about the context within which social work takes place, such as questions related to the legal framework surrounding social work, social workers' employment, and the knowledge and skills that social workers need (though we are not covering qualifying training). There may be questions about how social workers meet the expectations of people who use services, within the limited resources available. We are open to a broad range of questions related to social work with adults.

The Steering Group

The Adult Social Work PSP will be led and managed by the following people:

Those representing the views of people with lived experience of social work in England:

• John Bridle and Ally Khodabocus - independent carers
• Sally Ferguson-Wormley (Speakup Self Advocacy) and Alison Owen (member of National Co-production Advisory Group for TLAP - Think Local Act Personal)
• Richard Currie - independent service user

Those representing the views of registered social workers in England:

• British Association of Social Workers (BASW) - Peter Feldon and Suzanne Barnett (also representing West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership)
• Framework Housing Association - Pam Abbott
• Adult Principal Social Workers (PSW) Network - Karen Cook, Vice-Chair
• Adults Health and Social Care Commissioning, Bradford City Council - Elaine James
• Jewish Care - Avital Petel-Tzuck

Those representing the views of researchers:

• Social Care Workforce Research Unit, King's College London - Jill Manthorpe
• Research in Practice for Adults (RiPfA) - Lisa Smith
• NIHR School for Social Care Research - Mike Clark
• Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee (JUCSWEC) - Sam Baron
• Researchers cannot take part in choosing the priorities. This is to make sure that the final prioritised research questions are those agreed by people with lived experience and registered social workers only, in line with the JLA's mission.

The Partnership and priority setting process will be supported and guided by:

• The James Lind Alliance (JLA) - Katherine Cowan, Senior JLA Adviser, and Caroline Whiting, PSP Coordinator.
• The Department of Health (DH) - Lyn Romeo, PSP leader and Chief Social Worker for Adults, and Katie Weeks, DH coordination of the PSP.
• The Steering Group will agree the resources, including time and expertise that they will be able to contribute to each stage of the process. The JLA will advise on this.

Partners

Organisations and individuals will be invited to be involved with the PSP as partners. Partners are groups or individuals who will commit to supporting the PSP by circulating the PSP survey and helping the PSP to gather questions and uncertainties of practical importance relating to Adult Social Work. They should include, but not be limited to, service user groups, family action and campaign groups, professional and trade union bodies, statutory bodies, voluntary sector organisations and NHS organisations.

Partners represent the following groups:

• Adults and people approaching adulthood who use or are in contact with Adult Social Work services in England
• Registered social workers in England.

It is important that all organisations that can reach and advocate for these groups should be invited to become involved in the PSP. The JLA Adviser will take responsibility for ensuring the various stakeholder groups are able to contribute equally to the process.

Who shouldn't be involved?

Some organisations may be judged by the JLA or the Steering Group to have conflicts of interest. These may be perceived to affect those organisations' views, causing bias that is not acceptable. As this is likely to affect the results of the PSP, those organisations will not be invited to take part. It is possible, however, that interested parties may take part as observers when the Steering Group considers it may be helpful.

The methods the PSP will use

This section describes the planned steps that will help the PSP to complete its work. The exact details of the process may change during the project and may depend on the active participation and contribution of different groups. The Steering Group members will agree the exact method for any of the steps, guided by the PSP’s aims and objectives. More details of the steps involved in a PSP are in the Guidebook section of the JLA website at www.jla.nihr.ac.uk where examples of the work of other JLA PSPs can be seen.

Step 1: Identification and invitation of potential partners

Members of the Steering Group will identify potential partner organisations from their networks of contacts. Potential partners will be contacted about the Adult Social Work PSP and will be asked to help to communicate the initial and interim survey and PSP results.

Step 2: Awareness raising

The initial awareness raising will have several key objectives:

• to identify and engage potential members of the Adult Social Work PSP
• to present the plan for the PSP
• to initiate discussion, answer questions and address concerns

Step 3: Identifying professional practice uncertainties

The Steering Group will produce a way of asking organisations and individuals what uncertainties they have which are of importance to Adult Social Work practice in England. Approximately three months will be allowed to complete this exercise.

The method of consultation must be transparent and inclusive. The Steering Group must try to reach as representative a range of participants as practicable. Methods may include membership meetings, email consultation, postal or web-based questionnaires, internet message boards and focus groups.

Existing sources of information about research uncertainties relating to Adult Social Work will be searched. These can include question-answering services; research recommendations in scoping and other systematically conducted literature reviews, research reports/literature, guidelines and professional documentation; protocols for systematic and scoping reviews being prepared and registers or other details of research already happening in the UK.

Uncertainties previously identified by other JLA PSPs will be checked and any relevant to adult social work practice will be listed for consideration.

The starting point for identifying sources of uncertainties and research recommendations is the report by Manthorpe and Moriarty on adult social work evidence.

Step 4: Refining questions and uncertainties

The Steering Group has agreed that Kristina Staley, with the help of Steering Group members, will be responsible for this stage – the JLA can advise on the amount of time likely to be needed for this. The JLA will take part in this process as an observer, to ensure accountability and transparency.

The consultation process will produce “raw” unanswered questions about Adult Social Work. These raw questions will be listed, categorised and refined by Kristina Staley, with help from Steering Group members, into “collated indicative questions” which are clear, can be addressed by research and understandable to all. Similar or duplicate questions will be combined where appropriate.

Systematically conducted and scoping reviews, relevant past and current research and guidelines, or similar documents will be found and checked by Kristina Staley to see how much these refined questions have, or have not, been answered by previous research. Sometimes, people suggest uncertainties that have already been answered by research. This suggests that the results of the research were not communicated well to those who need to know the answers. The JLA recommends strongly that PSPs keep a record of these 'answerable questions' and deal with them separately from the 'true uncertainties' considered during the research priority setting process. The Steering Group will consider how to deal with these questions.

Uncertainties that are not fully addressed by previous research will be recorded on a template (supplied by the JLA) by Kristina Staley. This will demonstrate the checking undertaken to make sure that the uncertainties have not already been answered. This is the responsibility of the Steering Group, which will need to have agreed personnel and resources to be responsible for this. The data should be passed to the JLA for publication on its website once the PSP has completed, taking into account any changes made at the final workshop, in order to ensure that PSP results are publicly available.

Step 5: Prioritisation – interim and final stages

The aim of the final stage of the priority setting process is to prioritise through consensus the identified uncertainties relating to Adult Social Work in England.

• The interim stage, to get from a long list of uncertainties to a shorter list to be discussed at the final priority setting workshop (e.g. up to 30 uncertainties), may be carried out over email or online, or in other appropriate ways. Organisations and individuals will be asked to choose their top 10 most important uncertainties. There are examples of how other PSPs have done this at jla.nihr.ac.uk in the Key Documents of the Anaesthesia and Perioperative Care PSP section and the Childhood Disability PSP section.
• The final stage, to reach, for example, 10 prioritised uncertainties, is likely to be done in a face-to-face meeting, using group discussions, or other means if the Steering Group thinks these are more appropriate and accessible.

The JLA will facilitate this process and ensure transparency, accountability and fairness. Participants will be expected to declare their interests in advance of the final prioritisation exercise.

Dissemination of results

Findings and research

It is anticipated that the findings of the Adult Social Work PSP will be reported to funding and research agenda setting organisations such as the NIHR School for Social Care Research, Social Care Workforce Research Unit, Quality Outcomes Research Unit (QORU), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), etc. Steering Group members and partners are expected to develop the prioritised uncertainties into research questions and to work to establish the research needs of those unanswered questions to use when approaching potential funders, or when allocating funding for research themselves, if applicable.

Publicity

As well as alerting funders, partners and Steering Group members are encouraged to publish the findings of the Adult Social Work PSP as widely as possible. The Steering Group may publicise the results and process through reports in Plain English. This exercise will be distinct from the production of an academic paper, which the partners are also encouraged to do. However, production of an academic paper should not take precedence over publicising the results.

Agreement of the Steering Group

This protocol was approved by the Steering Group.