Dilemmas in social care to be tackled by new national research school

Urgent questions about how Britain should care for the 1.25 million adults in social care will start to get better answers from today with the opening of the School for Social Care Research.

With a budget of £15 million over the next five years, the School will lead and commission research in the field, develop a sharper understanding of what people want from care services and devise a more rigorous analysis of the issues involved.

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 Manchester, University of Kent, King’s College, London, and the University of York. The school is funded by the Government’s National Institute for Health Research.

Among the questions the school will try to answer are how users of care services can be given more control and greater choice, how unpaid carers can find a better balance with their working lives, whether there are better ways of commissioning services and whether social care meshes effectively with health care and other services.

At Manchester the lead person will be Professor David Challis, who is Director of the  Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Manchester.  He said: “It is an important development with the rising numbers of older people in our communities and the need to find effective ways of improving care and support for them, their carers and other groups in need of social care.  We will aim to undertake high quality research to address the most important issues and make a positive difference”.

Although the school is a collaboration between five universities it will, in time, have the flexibility to commission research from other institutions and companies.

One of its first tasks will be to carry out a public consultation to help define the areas it should investigate.

Notes for editors

Professor Challis is available for interview

For media enquiries contact

Aeron Haworth
Press Office
Faculty of Medical and Human sciences
University of Manchester
07717 881563
aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk