The social care workforce in the UK—hundreds of thousands of paid staff supporting older and disabled people—is the focus of a five-year research programme that asks how their training, stress levels, and working conditions directly affect the quality of care that service users and their families receive. This matters because social care is a labour-intensive sector where the workforce is the primary resource. Yet there is surprisingly little systematic evidence linking staff characteristics—such as career backgrounds, job satisfaction, exposure to workplace violence, or experiences of Black and minority ethnic workers—to outcomes for the people they support. The research also examines what kinds of knowledge social care workers actually need for different tasks, and how that knowledge can best inform daily policy and practice. If successful, this work could reshape how social care employers recruit, train, and retain staff. It might lead to better-targeted training programmes, reduced staff turnover, and improved support for workers facing violence or discrimination. The ultimate change would be more consistent, higher-quality care for older people and other service users—a quiet but critical improvement to a system that millions of UK families rely on every day.
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BackgroundThe Research Unit's central task is to develop the knowledge base for policy and practice in social work and social care. In particular, our programmes of research are designed to articulate the relationship between the key resource in social care - the workforce - and outcomes for service users and carers. Our core approach rests on the theoretical framework that high quality social care depends in large measure on the quality of the workforce. Our work thus includes attention to the careers and background of the social care workforce, their experiences of stress and job satisfaction, and their training and educational needs. In addition, our programme involves work on gender and employment in this sector, the effects of changing community care policy and practice, the impact of workplace violence and the issues facing Black and minority ethnic staff.This focus on the quality of the workforce in turn demands attention to key issues in the knowledge base supporting social care. Our research programme includes work on the quality of social care knowledge, the levels of knowledge required for different social care tasks, the role of knowledge in underpinning expertise and best practice, users' views of appropriate knowledge and how knowledge can best influence daily policy-making and practice.AimsHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Plan of InvestigationHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Potential ImpactHISTORIC PROJECT - Entire abstract transferred from the previous database into the [Scientific summary background] field of this database.Policy RelevanceUnknown
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