News - Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) - LSE Health and Social Care

Within the Partnerships for Older People Projects (POPP) 29 local authorities and their health and voluntary sector partners were funded by the Department of Health between 2006 and 2009. They were to develop services for older people aimed at promoting their health, well-being and independence, and preventing or delaying their need for higher intensity or institutional care.

The PSSRU took the lead in the national evaluation of the pilot projects. The evaluation findings were launched on 16 January by the Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham, when Karen Windle from the PSSRU presented key messages from the evidence collected.

The complex and multi-method national evaluation explored the process of implementation as well as the outcomes and found that a wide range of projects resulted in improved quality of life for participants and considerable savings as well as better local relationships.

The following publications from the evaluation will be available to download in pdf fomat:
Summary (12 pages, 81KB)
Final report (large file: 302 pages, 7.63MB)
Appendices to final report (246 pages, 2.21MB)
Interim report (October 2008), 10 pages, 131KB)

LSE Health and Social Care (of which PSSRU is a part) has been awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for 'applying research to the advancement of global health and social care policy'.

Martin Knapp, director of PSSRU, said: "LSE Health and Social Care is a vibrant group of very busy researchers, teachers and students. We are delighted that our efforts and achievements have been recognised with this highly prestigious award".

One of the other groups to be awarded a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2009 is the Health Services and Population Research Department at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. PSSRU enjoys many collaborative links with the Institute, and one of the component parts of the award-winning Department is the Centre for the Economics of Mental Health, directed by Martin Knapp.

New study investigates links between economic crisis and increasing mental health problems

Demand for treatment for mental health problems has increased over the past 12 months as people struggle to cope with unemployment, debt, home repossession, threat of redundancy and other difficulties caused by the recession.

As pressure mounts on the government to reduce levels of spending in public services, a new report, Mental Health and the Economic Downturn, warns against 'short-term gain for longer-term pain' and sets out ways of making mental health services more efficient without adversely affecting patient care.

The joint publication from LSE, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the NHS Confederation's Mental Health Network says that mental health problems cost £110 billion a year (greater than the costs of crime) and is projected to double over the next 20 years...

PSSRU is currently working on a European Observatory project examining knowledge transfer. This scoping study will map existing initiatives, mechanisms and practices of knowledge brokering for health policy making and identify what we know about what works and what does not, and what appears promising but has not yet been well evaluated. Further Information.

The DH has published a report on age equality in health and social care. The review analyses evidence about the nature, extent and variability of age discrimination in health and social care services. It also considers what reforms are already in train to tackle age discrimination and support greater age equality. It looks at evidence from a wide variety of sources, including academic research, stakeholder submissions, personal testimony and the conclusions of a number of workshops and engagement events.

PSSRU research led by Julien Forder and Jose-Luis Fernandez has provided the analytical modelling underpinning the new Green Paper on the future funding of care and support services in England. The cross government green paper, "Shaping the Future of Care Together", introduces the radical new concept of a national care system, and proposes one of three alternatives funding models.

The care and support of individuals with autism is costing the UK over £27 billion a year finds new research. Of this, £2.7 billion goes towards supporting children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), with £25 billion allocated to the care of adults.

The economic cost of autism in the UK, by Professor Martin Knapp and Dr Jennifer Beecham of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Renee Romeo, King's College London, is published in Autism journal this week.

With a budget of £15 million over the next five years, the School will lead research in the field, all of it aimed at improving services to improve people’s lives.

It is a collaboration between five universities, led by Professor Martin Knapp at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) who is Director of the new school. The other universities involved are the University of Kent, King’s College, London, Manchester University and the University of York. The school is funded by the Government’s National Institute for Health Research.

Around 250,000 vulnerable pensioners could be left without family care by 2041, opening up an unpaid care gap and potentially increasing demand for paid services, finds new research by LSE research fellow Linda Pickard.

Demand for unpaid care by frail older people from their adult children is projected to rise by 90 per cent in the next 35 years - yet the number of offspring projected to provide the intense care likely to meet their needs (care for 20 hours a week or more) will only rise by 27 per cent. More

Individual budgets – a government initiative allowing older, disabled and mentally ill people to control their own social care provision – are great for the majority of users but pose challenges for staff administering them, found a cross-institutional team brought together to evaluate them.

Dr Ann Richardson, a visiting fellow with PSSRU, has been awarded by the British Medical Association (BMA) for her latest book.

Entitled Life in a Hospice; reflections on caring for the dying (Radcliffe Publishing, September 2007), the book was awarded 'highly commended' in the medicine category of the BMA Book Competition 2008.

The UK government has announced proposals to make discrimination in goods and services on the basis of age illegal. Equalities Minister Harriet Harman introduced the proposals on 26 June as part of a package of measures in an Equalities Bill.

The Department of Health commissioned research from the PSSRU on age discrimination in mental health services to inform policy proposals. A summary report is now available - Age Discrimination in Mental Health Services (PDF).

PSSRU have recently released their second report from the Direct Payments Survey project looking at schemes providing support to people using direct payments. The full report – termed by Community Care as “one of the most detailed pictures to date of the challenges facing direct payment support schemes" - is available here (PDF).

The PSSRU was funded by the Strategy Unit (Cabinet Office) and the Department of Health to produce projections of the supply of informal care for younger adults and older people in England to 2041. For both younger adults and older people, the supply of informal care was compared to demand in future years. The analyses focus on the supply of intense care provided for 20 or more hours a week and on demand for social care from disabled people. The results show that, on the assumptions used, future informal care supply is projected to be lower than estimated demand in respect of both younger adults and older people. Two Discussion Papers are now available:

A recently completed report, commissioned by the Alzheimer's Research Trust, provides updated figures as to the cost of providing long-term care to older people with dementia, and finds that the cost will increase to £16.7 billion by 2031, as opposed to £10.9 billion as estimated in 2003.
View the ART press release for further information.

A summary of the report's findings have been published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry: Comas-Herrera A, Wittenberg R, Pickard L, Knapp M (2007) Cognitive impairment in older people: future demand for long-term care services and the associated costs, International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 22, 1037-1045.