We are pleased to bring you a two-part episode of CARE MATTERS, focussing on the work being done in IMPACT (IMProving Adult Care Together), the new UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. IMPACT is funded by the ESRC and the Health Foundation, with £15m over nearly 7 years.
We believe that good care isn’t about services, but about having a life – and that evidence can play a key part in achieving this vision.
However, for this to be meaningful, ‘evidence’ has to include insights from different types of research, from the lived experience of people who draw on care and support and carers, and from the practice knowledge of people working in adult social care. As IMPACT gets up and running, people from across social care have told us that they don’t really need ‘more evidence’ – but that they are crying out for practical support on the ground to make a difference in the realities of front-line services, support to fund the participation of people whose voices are seldom heard, and shared spaces/facilitation to come together to work on shared problems and shared solutions.
We’ll be building all these principles into a series of delivery models and projects which we’ll be piloting from 2022, and then rolling out across the UK from 2023. As we start this work, these two linked podcasts involve conversations between people different parts of the UK and from different parts of the social care ‘system’, exploring some of the key challenges and opportunities, and reflecting on what these mean for we work together to bring about positive changes on the ground. You can find out more about how to get involved via https://more.bham.ac.uk/impact/, but please listen to and share these podcasts as a way of continuing the conversation about how we get better care and support for all of us, how we see social care as a form of social and economic investment that we make in ourselves as a society, and how we work together to make a difference.