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Working Paper 3: Technology and social care: key areas of policy focus in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2019-2022

The 3rd Working Paper from the Centre for Care. Written by Dr Grace Whitfield and Dr Kate Hamblin.

Publication details This paper is a companion piece to Centre for Care Working Paper 1 ‘Technology in social care: spotlight on the English policy landscape, 2019-2022’ (Whitfield and Hamblin, 2022). As with that publication, we update a working paper from the Sustainable Care Programme [SCP] (Wright, 2020) which explored UK adult social care sector policy and practice related to the use of digital technologies in the period from 2000 to 2019.

To cite: Whitfield, G., Hamblin, K. (2023) Technology and social care: key areas of policy focus in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (2019-2022). Centre for Care Working Paper 3, CIRCLE, Sheffield: University of Sheffield.

ISBN: 978-1-8382688-3-1

©The authors and CIRCLE, The University of Sheffield, July 2023

Key findings

Our previous Working Paper (Whitfield and Hamblin, 2022) explored the development and use of technologies in England’s social care sector; this companion piece turns to the approaches of governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It outlines the variety of public organisations involved in funding and implementing technology, then highlights three key aims in governance across the three nations (prioritised to varying extents):

  1. promoting inclusion and tackling inequalities and inequities that might lead to digital exclusion;
  2. implementing co-design and co-production;
  3. developing data infrastructure projects and data frameworks.