SOcial Care Rapid evAluation TEam (SOCRATES)

Background There is an urgent need to improve social care. Decision-makers need to know which innovations and service developments are promising (in terms of effectiveness, affordability and equity), how to scale, spread and sustain them, and they need this evidence in a timely fashion. The Rapid Evaluation Team for Social Care (RET-SC) has been commissioned to address this need, and is a collaboration between researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science, King’s College London and the University of Central Lancashire. Aim The team’s purpose is to rapidly evaluate social care innovations and service developments and produce timely, rigorous research that is immediately useful to decision-makers to improve the quality, effectiveness and accessibility of services. Evaluation approach and methods To deliver our aim we will work closely with decision-makers and people with experience of social care. We will embed the values of co-production throughout our evaluations and will form a standing panel of public advisors and of evidence users, to facilitate rapid access to people willing and interested in co-producing plans for the RET-SC and our evaluations with us. Our co-produced evaluation plans will be tailored to the target population, context and the needs of evidence users. We have a flexible evaluation approach that can accommodate many types of evaluations e.g., formative, theory-based, rapid cycle. It consists of six steps: scope; prepare (including ethical review); investigate; analyse; action and follow-up; review, reflect and learn. We expect to use and combine various rapid methods and use a range of theories to interpret our findings. For each evaluation, we will involve people who are willing to be part of a co-production group in as many of the evaluation steps as possible, offering the maximum level of influence within activities associated with each step. For each evaluation we will co-create accessible findings summaries and work with the participating sites to help them use our research to improve their practice and operations. We will promote equality, diversity and inclusion within our ways of working. We will encourage and enable diverse groups of individuals and organisations to join our standing panels, research team and participate in our evaluations. We will investigate the equity and inclusion implications of the innovations / service developments we evaluate. Dissemination and impact Learning is at the heart of our approach. We want our research to inform both action beyond the evaluation sites, encouraging others to adopt promising innovations / service developments, and rapid evaluation practice. We will hold annual co-learning events with the standing panels and co-production teams to capture and share the learning from our evaluations. These events will also be a forum to develop plans for scaling and spreading promising innovations / service developments and co-create accessible outputs for different audiences. To ensure we reach many audiences, we will use social media channels and blogs to share our research. We will write peer-reviewed journal articles, speak at conferences and share findings via webinars. We will co-present and co-author outputs with our partners to maximise impact. Conclusion We want the RET-SC to become the leading centre for rapid evaluations in social care. We believe our team has the expertise, experience and networks to deliver this vision.