Adult social care partnership: Using co-production methods to build and evaluate a regional capacity building network to facilitate greater understanding use and production of research in adult social care.

Using research evidence judiciously within local authority (LA) commissioning and policy-setting offers decision-makers greater access to information on what works, increases opportunities for effective use of increasingly scarce resources, and improves certainty around the likelihood of success when implementing new interventions. In the UK and elsewhere there is increasing focus on understanding and implementation of EBP in social care practice.

There may be valuable lessons that can be translated from the context of heath however a number of factors make it important to explore how research uptake and capacity building works in social care might differ. Social care policy is set nationally, but interpreted, shaped and implemented in 152 locally elected councils. Social care in particular faces many challenges, in part because its delivery and funding are complex; delivered by countless individuals and over 40,000 establishments it is mostly dominated by private sector organisations.

About 90 per cent of the formal social care workforce are not professionally qualified, and around 6.5 million family and other unpaid carers also support social care. The result is considerably wider variation in social care practice than in health care. Embedding research consistently throughout practice is challenging as social care is less familiar with research and has fewer opportunities than healthcare to engage with an evidence base, both in training and practice.

The applicants propose the establishment of a regional research network (initially prioritising older adults as an area of greatest need and spend within LAs). We will employ a participatory approach with embedded evaluation to: -facilitate increased confidence in and ownership of evidence creation -identify research priorities and research capacity issues

-identify solutions for production, implementation and translation of knowledge -build a sustainable research infrastructure within social care in a region with acute need and high inequalities.

The Network is grounded in a theory based Research Capacity Development for Impact RCDi) Framework developed and published over a number of years by one of the co-applicants (Cooke). Using co-production/ participatory methods between public, practice and academic contributors the network will identify shared priorities, form communities of practice, establish a Social Care Academy and embed local research leadership models underpinned by a bespoke on line platform to support engagement and impact.

An embedded evaluation using realist principles will test the mechanism of the RCDi Framework within our 4 participating LA settings examining context-mechanism outcome chains, where the outcome of one mechanism stimulates another within the architecture of the network. Supported evaluators in residence will collect data corresponding to the seven areas of the detailed work plan to determine the extent to which research is embedding into practice and practice into research, local leadership development, sustainability and impact.

We will contribute to local and national debates around embedding of EBP within social care; exploring how partnerships within research can inform and deliver excellent services as well as contributing to knowledge production on co-production methods to support growth engagement with and conduct of research while developing capacity and funding within our region.