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SASCI

Supporting Adult Social Care Innovation

 

Dates: 16 September 2019 - 15 September 2024
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Description 

The SASCI Project aims to build evidence about how to support the adult social care sector to start-up, implement and spread affordable innovations that work well for everyone. 

SASCI will work with partners and stakeholders across England to:

  • Build up evidence about the process of innovating in adult social care and what influences that process, including the role of infrastructure for supporting innovation;
  • Develop a typology of adult social care innovations and of the infrastructure for supporting innovation in adult social care, with associated web-based inventories detailing the current state of the sector to improve knowledge about innovations and the innovation infrastructure;
  • Develop a theoretically-informed, evidence-based framework for understanding innovation in adult social care to inform the practice of innovating;
  • Better understand where and how the process of innovating in adult social care can be supported, by mapping the capacity for innovating and use of the support infrastructure across England, to direct policy and efforts to foster innovation; and
  • Build capacity in social care research through career development and building skills in the sector. 

Methods

The SASCI project is made up of six workpackages and will be shaped by conversations with stakeholders:

WP1: Conceptualises the innovation process in adult social care and describe its main features, by reviewing the theoretical literature around innovation, interviewing and holding workshops with stakeholders.

WP2: Case studies of adult social care innovations using qualitative methods to build evidence about why and how adult social care innovations are developed and implemented. The case studies will trace the innovation process backwards and follow it forwards in time to explore processes of spread between individuals and organisations. 

WP3: Insights from theories of innovation to understand why and how adult social care innovations explored in the case studies are developed, implemented and spread.

WP4: Investigation of support for innovating in adult social care, describing the range of support available, its main features and experiences of delivering and using it, through interviews and hold workshops with stakeholders.

WP5: Witness seminars to explore why and how past adult social care innovations were developed, implemented and spread, by collecting oral testimony from people involved in the innovation process. 

WP6: Survey to describe the extent and range of innovations in adult social care and knowledge about support for innovating in adult social care. Data collection on the capacity and conditions for innovation in the sector to explore the relationship between these aspects and the extent of innovation in adult social care. 

Further information

Principal Investigator at LSE: Dr Juliette Malley
Research Team at LSE: Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez, Professor Martin Knapp, Professor Gerald Wistow, Dr Valentina Zigante 
Collaborators: Care England, Islington Council, King’s College London, Kingston University London,Local Government Association (Care and Health Improvement Programme), Social Finance, Thurrock Council, Turning Point, University of York
Countries: England

Contact

Juliette Malley
sasci@lse.ac.uk