SOCIAL CARE: Local Authority Adult Social Care Recruitment and Retention research project
Lead: Dr Andy Pulman Post Doctoral Researcher and Professor Lee-Ann Fenge
Contact: apulman@bournemouth.ac.uk
Building social care research capacity and exploring local recruitment and retention issues in adult social care (ASC) from a number of different perspectives.
Within the Wessex region, we have been working to support the development of social care research over the past few years. In 2022, we completed a year-long study examining social care research enablers and barriers which might prevent or limit a positive research environment for practitioners (Pulman and Fenge, 2023).
This built the foundation for four projects across Wessex – funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) Wessex – which aimed to build research partnerships across local authorities (LAs) and universities in the region.
As part of these projects, separate funding was available to support research champions embedded within local authorities, to support activities such as lunch time research discussions, journal clubs and the development of practitioner focused research. To encourage buy-in from the LAs we developed research in partnership with them to respond to key priority areas.
Data for our project was collected between February 2023 and October 2023 and explored local recruitment and retention issues in Adult Social Care (ASC) from the perspective of four populations of interest. We collected data from n=131 participants across the four populations of interest:
Social care practitioners – social workers, allied health professionals, unregistered and other social care practitioners – currently working in ASC at two LAs
Social care staff with responsibility for performing exit interviews with LA staff currently working at the two LAs
Students currently enrolled in social work undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the Wessex region
Service users with lived experience of receiving services in either LA and advocates drawn from Wessex Region LA contracted services
A number of outputs from this project can be viewed below.
We have also submitted a number of journal articles describing findings from the project data to the peer review process, which will hopefully be available later this year.
Further reading – blogs:
A blog for World Social Work Day (19/03/24)
Further reading – reports:
Recruitment and retention in adult social care. Bournemouth: NCCDSW, Bournemouth University.
Further viewing: