Commissioning Home Care for Older People
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Commissioning Home Care for Older People
IRAS ID
213834
Contact name
David Challis
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 2 months, days
Research summary
Home care is one of the largest elements of local authority expenditure in adult social care and particularly in services for older people. The requirement for all service users to receive a personal budget has led to a need for home care services to respond flexibly to the individual needs of older people. Most home care services are commissioned by local authorities and provided by independent agencies, yet little is known about how this takes place.
The study aims to identify the main activities of the commissioning process and to explore the current arrangements in greater detail. It will include a literature review; data collection comprising a national survey of local authorities and interviews in a selection of local authorities and home care organisations; and comparisons with findings from an earlier survey to explore how commissioning arrangements have changed over time. The findings will also be linked to publicly available routine data on local authority performance with respect to adult social care, to explore associations with different approaches to commissioning. Production of evidence-based guidelines as a freely available web-based document to inform commissioning arrangements for home care for older people will be a primary output of this study. A public engagement group will be recruited from interested citizens to assist in the analysis and interpretation of the research findings. The full study method and findings are likely to be relevant for other service user groups. The study will last for two years and two months.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
17/IEC08/0016
Date of REC Opinion
28 Mar 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion