We are an NIHR Research Support Service Specialist Centre for Social Care supporting all researchers across England who are seeking expert advice on social care-related research. Our specialist service supports social care practitioners seeking to explore research opportunities.
Our vision is to deliver the highest quality, multidisciplinary and integrated research design and support service for social care. Our strategic aims are to:
- Serve social care interests by providing rigorous and responsive advice and guidance to research teams.
- Work inclusively and in partnership across the NIHR infrastructure and social care communities to build sustainable research capacity with particular regard to equality, diversity and inclusion.
We particularly welcome requests for support from those currently underserved by NIHR infrastructure. This includes children’s social care researchers, those in local community and voluntary organisations, and researchers from outside Russell Group institutions.
Our network of 25 social care academic specialists offer expert advice backed by a proven track record of social care grant and publication success. The following offers a selected range of our specialist fields and contexts:
- Adults and children with disabilities
- Ageing, dementia and social care
- Autism research
- Care leavers
- Domestic abuse
- Extra care housing
- Housing and care, including adaptations
- Learning disability
- LGBTQ+
- Looked-after children
- Moving and handling
- Parents with disabilities
- Personalisation
- Poverty and care inequalities
- Safeguarding
- Self-funders
- Social care law
- Social care outcomes
- Social interventions
- Strengths-based approaches
- Substance abuse
- Workforce research
Methodological expertise
We can support researchers with a full range of methodologies including RCTs in varied adult and children’s social care contexts, social care economics, social work and occupational therapy, participatory methods and corproduction in social care research, complex intervention design and evaluation, implementation science, advanced data science in social care, and qualitative research including longitudinal methods, conversation analysis and ethnography.
We are also able to draw on more specialist methodological input through our linked RSS Hub delivered by York & Partners as required, including Trials Unit support.
Research support
For research teams, we can provide assistance and advice with a raft of key areas of grant funding such as:
- Grant-writing for a social care commissioning panels, including articulating the case for funding in a social care context
- Thinking through and specifying research questions that suit social care priorities
- Finding collaborators and partners with social care expertise either in academia or within practice
- Financial support and expert advice for public and community involvement
- Design and methodological advice that is tailored and appropriate for social care settings
- Identifying and addressing key equality, diversity and inclusion issues in your research
- Developing routes to impact in policy and practice
- Choosing funding sources
- Peer reviewing your ideas and proposals.
For people applying for Fellowships, we can further support with mock interviews. We can also support social care practitioners making first steps towards research with more general advice and support.