Adult Social Work

Evaluating staff training and the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act in care homes for older adults

Addressing priority 5: NIHR research in progress

This study aims to improve how the Mental Capacity Act is put into practice and used in care homes. The team will do this by examining existing research and gathering data on how organisations use the Mental Capacity Act when designing and running training for their staff. They will then see how organisations put this training into practice. and look at the impact this has on residents and relatives.

Use of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 with people experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness in England

Addressing priority 5: NIHR research in progress

This study will examine how health and social care workers in England work with people who are homeless and how they find out, or 'assess', if a person can decide if they will accept help or refuse it. It will also find out if using a special guide can help workers improve these 'assessments' and if they then take different and better action to support people who are homeless.

Adult Social Care Needs Assessment and Care Planning

Addressing priority 6: Commissioning brief advertised to researchers by NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research Programme.

Opening the "Too Difficult Box": Strengthening Adult Safeguarding Responses to Homelessness and Self-neglect

Addressing priority 7: NIHR research

This study explores how self-neglect is experienced by people who are homeless, and how this can be addressed through strengthening local adult safeguarding responses.

Improving collaborative inter-agency systems and practice in self-neglect: identifying barriers and co-producing solutions

Addressing priority 7: NIHR research in progress

Joint working in self-neglect under current policies is under-researched; what research there is has focused exclusively on social worker perspectives. This study aims to identify why common problems arise in interagency and interprofessional practice with self-neglect, what systems, knowledge and practices professionals and people experiencing self-neglect have found helpful in avoiding them, and what recommendations and resources can improve practice.

How can Family Group Conferences be embedded as an alternative to Initial Child Protection Conferences to improve outcomes for families on the Child Protection pathway and under which circumstances: A realist evaluation by a research-practice partnership

Addressing priority 14: NIHR research in progress

The new Family Group Conference (FGC) pathway engages families and their wider networks earlier, in a strengths-based, less traumatic and shaming forum, to empower families to achieve more genuine and constructive partnership working. However, there is not much knowledge from research about how an a FGC will work for which families. This is important to find out as research shows FGCs work differently for different people and so will not help every family. For these reasons, this research team wants to find out what works to get professionals to choose the FGC pathway, and which families this new pathway should be chosen for.

Family Group Conferencing for children and families: Evaluation of implementation, context and effectiveness (Family VOICE)

Addressing priority 14: NIHR research in progress

A Family Group Conference (FGC) is a meeting where the wider family discuss children who need support and protection and decide on a plan for looking after them. The aim of this research is to increase understanding of quality and effectiveness in family group conferencing.

Family Group Conferencing in adult social care and mental health: exploring how it works and what difference it can make in people’s lives

Addressing priority 14: NIHR research in progress

This research team will start by finding out about the approaches to Family Group Conferencing (FGC) that are currently being developed nationally. They will consult with people who deliver FGC services and those who have used them. They will then look at more depth what is going on in some local FGC services. As well as interviewing people involved in delivering the service, they will track what happens for around 25-30 individuals, together with members of their family and/or social networks, who choose to go through with a Conference. This will involve a combination of interviews and survey questions and also direct observations of Conferences where people are comfortable with this. They will also track the progress of some of those who do not go through to have a Conference, and they will seek to find out the reasons for this. They will follow everyone up 9-12 months later and compare their progress with a group of people in similar situations who have had no involvement with FGC. From this, they hope to find out what sorts of difference FGC can make in people's lives, and whether any improvements are sustainable.