About NIHR SSCR

The School for Social Care Research, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), formally began work in May 2009 and was extended in 2014 and in 2018. The School was refreshed in 2023 and an extension for a further five-year period was confirmed in 2024.

Phase I (2009–2014) involved the London School of Economics and Political Science (Lead), King’s College London and the Universities of Kent, Manchester and York.

Phase II (2014–2019) involved the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Universities of Bristol, Kent, Manchester and York.

Phase III (2019-2024) involved the London School of Economics and Political Science (Lead), King’s College London and the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Kent, Manchester and York.

Phase IV

Membership of Phase IV of the School from May 2024 will be announced shortly.

Mission

The School’s mission in Phase IV continues to commission and conduct internationally leading social care research to improve the evidence base for effective and equitable practice and to support the translation of evidence into practice

In pursuit of this mission, we aim to create an environment where excellent applied social care research, focused on the needs of the practice and the public can thrive. Practitioners, policy colleagues, and public stakeholders will engage with research from the earliest planning stages through to delivery, dissemination, and application. We aim to bridge the divide between academics and practitioners and to support practitioners in the understanding, use and generation of high-quality research evidence to inform their decisions by making our outputs practical, relevant, accessible and timely and by nurturing long-term, mutually respectful relationships of knowledge and skills exchange.

Thematic Priorities

The School’s research programme will cover the following key thematic areas in this context of adult social care (in no priority order).

1. Supporting choice and control for people to live flourishing lives: evaluation of feasibility, quality, impact and effectiveness of existing and new models of support.
2. Adult social care needs (met and unmet), and prevention in its broadest sense.
3. Digital and other new technologies.
4. The adult social care workforce: recruitment and retention; workforce development, skills, and training; roles development and new ways of working; challenges including equality and diversity.
5. Care resources management and allocation: eligibility; assessment; innovative approaches to funding; equality and value across self- and state-funded services; financial pressures facing adults needing support and their families.
6. Supporting carers and volunteers.
7. Communities and local area networks to promote well-being; including asset-based approaches, social prescribing; community and individual capability; personalisation; interdependency.
8. Care systems and markets: local authorities management of volume and quality in local services/markets; market-shaping and the impact on providers and others; impact of major changes (e.g. legislation/policy) to systems of care; the impact of coproduced service provision.
9. Diversity, inequality and communities/populations less well represented in research: covering areas such as variations in accessing adult social care; promising practice and support for specific user groups; coproducing solutions to challenge inequality.
10. Adult social care at the interface with other systems.