New ways of working for adult social care workers
Research type
Research Study
Full title
New ways of working for adult social care workers: an investigation of 'blended roles' (delegated healthcare) in the Greater Manchester Integrated Care System
IRAS ID
336422
Contact name
Carol Atkinson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
The population of England is getting older, and that means more people need social care, for example, support with personal care, either in their own homes or in care homes. Social care workers deliver this care. People may also need healthcare which is delivered by community nurses. This can lead to problems including too many visits from health and social care staff or missed visits. Also, there is a shortage of social care workers, which puts a lot of pressure on health and social care systems. To solve these problems, we need to re-think the roles of the people providing these services. This is called 'blending roles’ where social care workers take on some of the community nurses’ tasks. While this is happening in practice, there is not currently enough evidence on how well it works and what it achieves.
Our research focuses on understanding of blending the roles of NHS community nurses and care workers from private sector care providers in Greater Manchester. We will be asking people involved how blended roles:
• Affect the experience of people receiving care.
• Affect working conditions for care workers.
• Impact the quality of adult social care.To improve the evidence on blended roles, our research will:
• Look at existing information and research to see what's already known.
• Talk to health and social care workers, people receiving care and/or their families, and other people involved in blended roles to understand their experiences.
• Develop a framework to measure how well blended roles are working and recommend what information needs to be collected. This will help us create a way to evaluate how effective blended roles are.
• Use the information we gather, to create a toolkit that will guide the implementation of blended roles in a way that works well for people who use services.REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/WM/0235
Date of REC Opinion
16 Dec 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion