Evaluating Micro-Enterprises in Adult Social Care, version 1

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Does Smaller mean Better? Evaluating Micro-Enterprises in Adult Social Care

• IRAS ID

  130808

• Contact name

  Catherine Needham

• Contact email

  c.needham.1@bham.ac.uk

• Research summary

  Are care services best delivered through very small, locally-based services that are ’close to the user’ or do larger organisations offer more efficient and effective care? This project aims to test the relationship between size and performance in organisations providing adult social care to see if micro-enterprises (employing 5 staff or fewer) outperform larger care providers in delivering services that are:

  • valued
  •innovative
  •personalised
  •cost-effective

  This research will compare outcomes and value for money across micro, small, medium and large care providers (categorised by the number of staff working in them). It will undertake interviews and a survey with 81 people using services and 27 carers in 27 case study organisations, across three English local authorities.

  The project will recruit and train people using services and carers as co-researchers. They will work alongside the university-based research team to design the interviews, undertake the interviewing and surveying, analyse the data and disseminate the findings. The involvement of the co-researchers will be evaluated afterwards to see what impact it had on the research process and how the co-researchers themselves found the experience.

  The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. It aims to produce findings that are of direct relevance to local authorities, service users and other organisations as they commission care services, and to social entrepreneurs as they develop provision. It also aims to deepen social scientific knowledge of the relationship between organisational size and performance in welfare services, of relevance to academics working in fields such as social policy and public management.

• REC name

  Social Care REC

• REC reference

  13/IEC08/0029

• Date of REC Opinion

  3 Sep 2013

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion