A scoping review of current organisational guidance for the professional practice of positive risk-taking within Adult Social Care services for people with a physical disability. Open access article - no login required.
This article reports the findings of a doctoral study into AMHP decision-making at the point of referral for an MHA assessment. Open access article - no login required.
Loneliness is recognised as a ‘grand challenge’ for social work, given its negative impact on health and well-being. But there has been limited progress on how social workers should respond. We aimed to characterise social work research on loneliness from 2016 to 2021, to inform policy, practice and training. Open access article - no login required.
This study adds to our understanding of key topics in social science research on COVID-19. The automated literature analysis presented is particularly useful for librarians and information specialists keen to explore the role and contributions of social science topics in the context of pandemics. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
The King’s Fund, said:
‘The National Audit Office report shows that Department of Health and Social Care is struggling to deliver even the limited reforms to adult social care that it has promised. It is particularly worrying that progress on workforce reform – the scale of which had already been reduced – is glacial, with the only real action being in international recruitment. Development of a career pathway for care workers – a critical reform given vacancies in the sector – has stalled. Plans for the Care Quality Commission to assess local authorities’ social care performance have also been delayed.
CPD and the learner experience have a wide range of considerations for both social care and social work as a profession, and what the research identifies is that the learning experience does not happen in a vacuum, it is influenced by a wide range of factors, both past, current, and future focused, and these need to be thought about as CPD is planned and developed.
There are important points of learning in relation to both how we can effectively promote and sustain support of civic involvement in practice, and how social care as a sector generates its evidence based and then uses this knowledge to underpin practice across diverse and dispersed practice contexts.
In this paper the authors focus on one Discharge to Assess service and analyses the perspectives and experiences of those involved in its delivery within systemic analysis framework.
This paper presents the methodology and findings of a systematic review of the available evidence relating to social workers experience of bureaucracy in practice.
This study aimed to classify people by MLTC and social care needs (SCN) into distinct clusters and quantify the association between derived clusters and care outcomes. It highlights those at risk of worse care outcomes, including nursing home admission. Open access article - no login required.
First, the good news. Vacancies in adult social care fell slightly in 2022/23, from a record 164,000 in 2021/22 to 152,000 in 2022/23.* The number of filled posts increased and there was also a small fall in staff turnover. Together, the figures demonstrate a small but significant release of pressure on the social care sector. Providers, and people who draw on services, will be desperate for it to continue.
Digging into the numbers, however, it’s clear that the fall in vacancies was due to a large increase in the number of care workers coming to the UK from abroad, from 20,000 in 2021/22 to 70,000 in 2022/23. These new overseas workers, while welcome, are not by themselves the answer to the long-term recruitment crisis in social care.
Even across such a broad group there was good agreement about both the challenges facing adult social care and the type of social care system people wanted to see.
There were also many examples of technology being effectively used to improve quality and ensure better choice and control, as well as generating efficiencies. These examples gave a glimpse of the potential for technology to benefit those that draw on services, carers, staff and organisations.
Our findings contribute to an emerging picture of what transpired in residential care homes during the first year of the pandemic and help to provide an empirical and normative basis for the development of the new guidance and training for which the CQC has called. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This study examined how health and social care professionals and managers perceive the effects of digitalisation on the work of professionals.
Open Access Article
Domestic abuse (DA) is a major issue with serious psychological, social, societal and economic impacts. Consequently, there has been an increased focus by policymakers and multiple statutory and third-sector agencies on addressing harms associated with DA and fostering healthy intimate and domestic relationships. This paper details the development and implementation of a whole family approach to DA set within a community social services setting. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
[Opinion piece] The first part of the Care Act 2014 drew heavily on the Law Commission’s review of adult social care. The review began in 2007 and its initial terms of reference did not even refer to carers or the notion of wellbeing but both came to feature heavily in the Act, illustrating that the Commission actively listened, particularly to carers’ voices. Placing informal carers on an equal footing with people drawing on care and the right to a carer assessment were significant breakthroughs in the Act.
This article represents reflections on current social and legal issues for people given a mental diagnosis, from a lived experience perspective. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.