Finding and funding social care
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Finding and funding social care: a qualitative study of the experiences of self-funders
IRAS ID
269961
Contact name
Kate Baxter
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of York
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 28 days
Research summary
Background:
People may become frail as they get older, or have one or more health conditions that mean they struggle with everyday activities. The term social care covers a wide range of support for such people; some are eligible for support funded by their local council whilst others are not. People not eligible for council-funded support are called ‘self-funders’.
About two in five people living in a care home are self-funders and one in five people receiving care at home. We don’t know much about their experiences, but we do know that finding information about care and paying for care is difficult. Self-funders often rely on asking friends and family for advice, but they usually don’t understand the social care system either.
Aims:
• to find out more about self-funders’ experiences of finding and funding social care.
• to create a website containing written information and film clips about these experiences. It will be based on an existing website called Healthtalk.org, which is about people’s experiences with a wide range of health conditions.What we will do:
1. Talk to 5 small groups of the public and relevant professionals (such as those from local council, NHS and voluntary organisations) to find out how, when and why people would use the website we will create. These discussions will also help us make sure we publicise the website appropriately.
2. Interview 40 self-funders or their relatives about their experiences of finding and funding care. We will film these interviews if people are happy for us to do so. We will then look in detail at all the interviews and group people’s experiences together into shared experiences. For example, a shared experience might be about knowing where to get information from. We expect to have about 20-25 main groups of experiences. We will write an overview of each experience. The website production team will then create the website which will contain these overviews and films.
3. Ask people who took part in the group discussions in the first stage of the project to test the website before it goes live.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
19/IEC08/0053
Date of REC Opinion
15 Nov 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion