Outcomes in Social Care Assessments - Pilot
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Outcomes in Social Care Assessments - Pilot
IRAS ID
218228
Contact name
Jon Symonds
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bristol
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 27 days
Research summary
Having an assessment is one of the most important meetings in adult social care as it is the basis of deciding what care and support a person is likely to get. The Care Act has underlined the importance of the meeting, but also introduced in legislation, the idea that social care assessments should be focused on what 'outcomes' the person wants to achieve and that assessments can be 'proportionate'. There is quite a lot of guidance about conducting assessments, but little research on the topic. Most research has focused on the views of service users and practitioners, but it is rare for studies to ask both the practitioner and the service user who have been involved in the same assessment.
This study will investigate the relationship between the quality of the assessment and the outcomes agreed in the meeting. The researcher will use a questionnaire to collect the views of practitioners, service users and carers about 15 assessment meetings conducted by the organisation. There will be different versions of the questionnaire for the practitioner, service user and carer, but they will all collect information about their perceptions of what was agreed in the assessment, how well the assessment went, and what communication skills the practitioner used.
Practitioners will be recruited from one organisation and they will be asked to introduce the study to service users when they are arranging an assessment. For those who consent, the researcher will arrange to accompany the practitioner to the assessment meeting and complete the questionnaire with the service user and carer afterwards. The practitioner will be asked to complete the questionnaire afterwards, but separately. The researcher aims to collect questionnaires relating to 15 social care assessments.REC name
South Central - Berkshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0682
Date of REC Opinion
9 Jan 2017
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion