Enhancing research capacity in adult social care: The SCRiPT study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Enhancing research capacity in adult social care and social work in the East of England: testing the feasibility of Research in Practice Teams (The SCRiPT study)
IRAS ID
302439
Contact name
Kathryn Almack
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Hertfordshire
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Over 1 million adults in the UK receive care and support from social care because of their age, illness or disability. A wide range of staff with different qualifications and experience provide social care. The Government wants social care to make more use of research evidence but not enough social care staff have the skills to do research.
We will use an approach called ‘Communities of Practice’ to see if it increases research skills in staff. Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of practitioners with a common interest. They are used in healthcare to help staff build research skills. We want to see if they work in social care settings.
We will work with local authority partners in Hertfordshire and Norfolk to create and test four CoPs that will focus on increasing research skills among social care staff. We are calling these CoPs Research in Practice Teams (RiPT). Each RiPT will include 6-7 practitioners and researchers with different levels of experience. Teams will be funded for two years to undertake a research project. Each RiPT will have a practitioner team lead funded for 2.5 days a week. We will fund other practitioners in the RiPT to take time out from frontline duties. Service users and carers will be actively involved in the research projects undertaken by each RiPT. We will train and support RiPTs to help them do the research.
We will collect data at the beginning, middle and end of the RiPTs to see if they: 1) help researchers and practitioners work together; 2) help team members to understand and carry out research; 3) lead to research that is relevant to local organisations, service users and carers. Data will include focus groups and interviews, and data on research knowledge and research outputs such as research grants and papers.REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/EM/0204
Date of REC Opinion
17 Aug 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion