Towards a better future for care: Planning for impact
Fay Benskin and Dan Williamson discuss how strategic planning and dedicated oversight maximise the real-world impact of the Centre for Care’s research.
Fay reflects on how comprehensive understanding of research findings, mapping out local and national policy drivers, and identifying specific stakeholders who can directly benefit from the work, all up the chances of impact success.
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Related links
Click here to read about the Mind the Gap board game.
Click here to learn more about the Policy Breakfast events.
Click here to learn more about our experiences at Party conference in 2025.
Click here to read the Centre for Care’s impact report, launched on 11th February 2026
Click here to explore the Unpaid Care Dashboard.
About our speakers
Fay is the Impact Specialist in the Centre for Care, working with academics and external partners including stakeholders, voluntary sector organisations and policy makers to mobilise research findings to achieve impact beyond academia. Her role is to work with our researchers to plan for impact. Fay identifies partnerships and explores collaborative opportunities to ensure research findings are widely shared, to influence practice and policy.
In 2020, Dan began producing the CARE MATTERS podcast, which features interviews and conversations with experts in the field of social care. The podcast continues to attract audiences from around the world.
Dan created the ‘Mind the Gap’ board game in 2024, developing this idea with award-winning artist Paul Evans for the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024. The game has since been on tour around England with new versions being developed with colleagues at the University of Sheffield, and in collaboration with national charities.
Dan is currently Digital and Communications Coordinator at the ESRC-funded Centre for Care and continues his work on the CARE MATTERS podcast, as well as producing animations, videos, various other digital outputs and maintaining the Centre for Care website and social media platforms.
