Understanding and Improving Fairness in Social Care Needs Assessments
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding and Improving Fairness in Adult Social Care Needs Assessment
IRAS ID
329473
Contact name
Jed Meers
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of York
Duration of Study in the UK
years, months, days
Research summary
No one can receive state support for social care without first having a “needs assessment”. With over 2 million requests for support each year in England alone, this process is the lynchpin of the social care system: it determines an individual’s needs, how they impact their wellbeing, and the outcomes they wish to achieve.
However, working alongside members of the public and social care users through the University of York Curiosity Partnership, we have identified three problems:
1. Little is known about how the needs assessment process works: Previous work demonstrates that people find the needs assessment process difficult. However, most research to date focuses on the outcome of a needs assessment (e.g. the support plan) rather than how Local Authorities arrive at the decision.
2. The public think the process is unfair: To inform this research, we commissioned YouGov to survey a representative sample of the public (n=3,454). 80% do not have confidence that the procedures used to decide social care applications are fair.
3. There is huge variation in practice between local authorities.To tackle these problems, this project has three aims:
1. To understand how/why Local Authorities decide the format of a “needs assessment” for adults with social care needs.
2. To understand what social care users and the public think is a fair social care “needs assessment”.
3. To change “needs assessment” processes to make them fairer.
To answer these questions, the project will undertake two strands of data collection:
1. In-depth case studies in five areas - including interviews with staff (20 in total) and people subject to a needs assessment (40 in total) - to examine how Local Authorities manage the “needs assessment” process and the experiences of those assessed.
2. A survey experiment with a representative sample of the UK public, exploring what factors/trade-offs are most important to the public for fair social care needs assessments.
REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/WM/0121
Date of REC Opinion
5 Aug 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion