Timetable and Budget
|
Description |
Deadline/Limit |
|---|---|
|
Deadline for Stage 1 Applications |
04 October 2022, 1 PM |
|
Notification of outcome of Stage 1 Application |
13 December 2022 |
|
Project Start |
Within 2 months of outcome notification |
|
Project Duration |
Development phase: up to 6 months Following completion of this development phase funding may be offered for a main study (estimated duration 18 months) |
|
Budget |
Development phase: £100,000 - £120,000 : (estimate value for follow-on main study: £500,000 – £700,000) |
Introduction
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Policy Research Programme (PRP) invites applications for a multi-phase research project to evaluate adult social care workforce interventions as set out in the People at the Heart of Care: Adult Social Care Reform White Paper [1] (hereafter ‘White Paper’).
This research project will fund:
- a development phase to consider methodological approaches as well as existing and planned data sources to identify a robust study design to answer the research questions of interest;
- a main study to be conducted following the development phase.
Applicants are invited to submit plans and costs for the development phase of the research. Since the development phase will inform the main study, we recognise that it will not be possible to set out full details of the main study.
This phased approach enables a flexible commissioning process, with opportunities for applicants to refine plans and costs. Further details of the commissioning process are set out below.
This is an opportunity to contribute to building an evidence base on a high profile, under-researched and important policy area. This work will inform future private and public investment in adult social care workforce policies.
Background
With over 1.62 million filled posts (The Size and Structure of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England 2022) [2] the adult social care workforce is larger than the NHS, construction, transport, or food and drink service industries. There are at present recruitment and retention challenges and barriers, which are likely to become more pressing as the population requiring care grows and the way care is delivered evolves and diversifies.
To meet these challenges, as set out in the White Paper People at the Heart of Care, the UK Government committed to invest at least £500m over three years to support the adult social care workforce. This will be primarily an investment in knowledge, skills and health and wellbeing, which aims to improve social care as a long-term career choice.
Based on current policy development, funding will support a range of interventions across three main areas: skills-based intervention for non-regulated professions; skills-based interventions for regulated professions; and wellbeing and occupational health interventions. The specific interventions listed below are indicative and the successful research team should work with DHSC to agree the focus of the process evaluation during the development phase:
Skills-based interventions - Non-regulated professions
- Care certificate: Funding to achieve a portable care certificate, to ensure Care Certificate training is high-quality and portable, so that care workers can carry it with them throughout their careers.
- Learning and development offer: Funding to achieve qualifications and non-accredited training at Level 2, 3, 4 and 5.
- Skills passport: Permanent and verifiable record of skills, behaviours and achievements that can be shared with new or potential employers.
- Registered manager (RM) policies: Programmes to support RMs in their first year and the development of future RMs.
Skills-based interventions - Regulated professions
- Continuing professional development (CPD) for regulated health professionals: Funding to contribute towards the cost of CPD.
- Social work education and training: Investment in initial training routes to become social workers and post-qualification training.
Wellbeing and occupational health interventions:
- Wellbeing interventions: Mental health and wellbeing relief, including programmes such as coaching, one-to-one talking therapies, bespoke support helpline, access to mental health first aid training, peer support interventions.
- Occupational health (OH) pilot: Pilot to introduce a bespoke portal for social care providers to obtain information about occupational health and link themselves with occupational health providers or initiatives in their area.
- Occupational health portal: Portal to facilitate access to OH services.
The elements of this programme are expected to be rolled out nationally and at the same time, although take-up by providers may vary between local areas. Many have not been previously implemented in the adult social care workforce context.
Research priorities
The overarching aim of the main study is to assess the impact of the investment in the adult social care workforce and to understand which interventions are most effective in achieving the outcomes of interest. This will add to evidence of what works, to inform future public and private investment in the sector.
Work has been done within DHSC to develop logic models describing the mechanisms whereby the programme and the different interventions within it will achieve their intended outcomes. Research questions have been derived from the logic models, with the expectation that the successful bidder will work with the DHSC team to refine these during the development phase.
|
Workstream |
Indicative questions |
|---|---|
|
Overall workforce reform |
|
|
Skills-based interventions - Non-regulated professions |
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Skills-based interventions - Regulated professions |
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Wellbeing and occupational health interventions |
|
Design and methodology for the impact evaluation
The main aim of the development phase is to assess the feasibility of a larger impact evaluation and to propose a methodology and design of such an evaluation. As part of this, applicants will be expected to consider:
- quasi-experimental and theory-driven approaches to evaluation, to recommend the most suitable to address the research questions.
- the logic models developed by DHSC and the evidence underpinning them.
- a proportionate approach to process evaluation that would support assessment of causal impact (how and why interventions have worked, where there has been a change in the outcomes of interest).
- the data currently collected, to recommend possible improvements in data collection.
We are not prescriptive on methodology, inviting bidders to advise on suitable approaches to answer the research questions set out above. Applicants will have significant scope to shape the methodology during the development phase, albeit with the condition that we expect to maximise the use of quantitative methods as far as possible. We envisage qualitative research to mainly be used to strengthen the assessment of causality and we welcome suggestions for how to approach that.
The impact evaluation is expected to draw on already existing or soon to be available data sources (to be commissioned separately by DHSC – see paragraph 15), rather than to require new primary data collection. The development phase will be important for reviewing the data sources available and assessing their suitability in addressing the evaluation research questions.
DHSC is also planning to commission a workforce cohort survey which will collect novel data directly from ASC employees to be used in the evaluation of these workforce policies The survey will include measures of interest currently not included in the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), potentially including measures of employee subjective wellbeing, self-reported health and quality of work appropriate to the adult social care context. Officials in DHSC will, as far as possible, enable access to relevant data from this survey to support the successful research team to conduct the evaluation. The successful research team will have scope to recommend improvements to future waves of the survey during the development phase – as far as commissioning timetables for the survey allow.
Process evaluation is envisioned as part of the main study to supplement the evidence gathered from the impact evaluation. This will be used to help inform the implementation of the policies. This is likely to entail new primary, qualitative data collection. The successful research team will work with DHSC officials during the development phase to agree process-evaluation research questions and determine how to collect the additional data needed.
Commissioning Process
We invite proposals using the NIHR PRP Stage 1 form specific to this call. At this stage, applicants are required to submit their plans and costs for the development phase of the project. Since this will inform the main study, we recognise that it will not be possible to set out full details of the main study. However, applicants are required to describe how they will manage and deliver the main study.
The development phase study will be commissioned via a one-stage process. The funding decision will be informed by advice from the Policy Research Programme funding committee.
On completion of the development phase, applicants will be required to set out a plan for the main study and an indicative budget. This plan will be assessed by independent experts and a judgement will be made regarding the next stages of research and whether to proceed..It is possible that the development phase of research will conclude that a main study is not possible or deliverable within the available research budget. The decision to progress will be subject to independent expert assessment of the development phase, including the proposed approach to the main study, and budget approval.
Should the development phase conclude that a main study as proposed is not feasible, an output of the development phase could be alternative proposal achieving the aims set out here for the main study. Any such alternative proposals will similarly be subject to assessment by independent experts and DHSC officials, on whether and how to proceed..
Outputs
Key outputs from the development phase should include:
- An end-of development phase workshop.
- A end-of development phase report detailing:
- the methodological approaches that have been considered for the impact evaluation;
- the recommended approach for the design of the main study or options for the design of the main study:
- the suggested approach for process evaluation;
- recommendations for changes to data collection in future years.
Applicants are asked to consider the timing and nature of deliverables in their proposals. Policymakers will need research evidence to meet key policy decisions and timescales, so resource needs to be flexible to meet these needs. A meeting to discuss policy needs with DHSC officials will be convened as a matter of priority following contracting.
Budget and duration
Funding is available for both phases of research set out in this document. At this stage, we anticipate commissioning a development phase study costing up to £120,000. Our current planning assumption is that a subsequent main study will cost between £500,000 and £700,000.
For current planning purposes, we expect the development phase to take up to 6 months. Applicants are asked to describe the work anticipated in the development phase in detail, providing an accurate estimate of the cost for delivering this development phase specifically. This figure should be entered in the application as the estimated research cost.
The duration of the main study will need to be considered in light of the development phase. We estimate that the main study could take up to an additional 18 months. This timetable is not fixed; applicants are asked to set out their own indicative estimates for the timing and costs anticipated across the different phases of the project (this information can be included within the narrative research plan section of the application), based on their specific proposals.
Costings can include up to 100% full economic costing (FEC) but should exclude output VAT. Applicants are advised that value for money is one of the key criteria that peer reviewers and commissioning panel members will assess applications against.
Management arrangements
Engagement with DHSC and the advisory group will be important in shaping the project during the development phase. DHSC officials will support the successful research team to access the relevant officials.
A research advisory group including, but not limited to, representatives of DHSC, other stakeholders and the successful applicants for the research should be established. The advisory group will provide guidance, meeting regularly over the lifetime of the research. The successful applicants should be prepared to review research objectives with the advisory group, and to share emerging findings on an ongoing basis. They will be expected to:
- Provide regular feedback on progress
- Produce timely reports to the advisory group
- Produce a final report for sign off
Research contractors will be expected to work with nominated officials in DHSC, its partners and the NIHR. Key documents including, for example, research protocols, research instruments, reports and publications must be provided to DHSC in draft form allowing sufficient time for review.
New Guidance on Health Inequalities data collection within NIHR PRP Research:
Health Inequalities is a high priority area within the Department of Health and Social Care and the NIHR and is often present in a majority of funded projects. We are now assessing all NIHR research proposals in relation to health inequalities. We are asking applicants to identify in their application whether or not there is a health inequalities component or theme and how this research hopes to impact health inequalities. We are also asking researchers to collect relevant data, if appropriate for the research. Our goal is to collect information on health inequalities in research and data relating to the main outcome(s) of the proposed research. Please clearly identify in this section whether or not your application has a health inequalities component or relevance to health inequalities and detail the core set of health inequalities breakdowns that will be reported; if none please explain why. We understand that research projects have different methodologies and focus on different populations, so please explain what data will be collected and reported for the methodology you plan to use. If a health inequalities component is not included, please explain why this does not fit within your proposed research. This should only be a few sentences.
For quantitative research we would ideally like researchers to provide one-way breakdowns of their main outcome(s) by the following equity-relevant variables: age, sex, gender, disability, region, 5 ONS Ethnic groups, and the 5 IMD quintile groups. If more detailed cross tabulations are appropriate, please include these. This table should be submitted to NIHR PRP at the end of the project. Due to data limitations, judgement calls may be necessary about which breakdowns to report and whether to merge categories to increase counts in particular cells; we ask you to make these judgement calls yourself, bearing in mind our data curation aim of enabling future evidence synthesis work in pooling results from different studies. More details and an example table can be found in Appendix A.
For qualitative research projects, this can be purely descriptive statistics giving the number of observations against the various variables.
Further details about this new request can be found in Appendix A.
We will also be holding a Health Inequalities in NIHR PRP Research Q&A Event on 19 September 2022, more details in APPENDIX B.
References and key documents
- Department of Health and Social Care. People at the Heart of Care: Adult Social Care Reform White Paper. 2021. Available at: People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform
- Skills for Care. The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England. 2022. Available at: The size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England
Appendix A: Further Detail on the New Guidance on Health Inequalities data collection within NIHR PRP Research
Health Inequalities is a high priority area within the Department of Health and Social Care and the NIHR and is often present in a majority of funded projects. We are now assessing all NIHR research proposals in relation to health inequalities. We are asking applicants to identify in their application whether or not there is a health inequalities component or theme and how this research hopes to impact health inequalities. We are also asking researchers to collect relevant data related to health inequalities, if appropriate for the research. Collecting specific information about health inequalities in research submitted to the programme will allow for categorisation of health inequalities research, curation of data to aid future health inequalities research and enable policymakers to better understand the implications of health inequalities within their policy areas. This is a new request from the NIHR PRP and we will be continuing to monitor queries and adapt the process as needed. If you have any feedback on this new request, please contact us at prp@nihr.ac.uk.
Our goal is to facilitate more widespread and consistent reporting of health inequality breakdown data relating to the primary outcomes of NIHR funded research. We would ideally like researchers to focus on the following equity-relevant variables: age, sex, gender, disability, region*, 5 ONS Ethnic groups**, and the 5 IMD quintile groups. These variables are considered an ideal, but we understand that these are subject to change depending on the sample population and specific research question.
For qualitative research projects, this can be purely baseline characteristics of the participants, for example, the number of participants in each ethnic group.
For quantitative research projects, if there are multiple outcomes/effects with your stakeholders, select a small number of main outcomes as appropriate to report equity breakdowns. We will not be prescriptive about the number of the outcomes, as it will depend on the number of study design types and the nature of the project aims. We are asking for one way cross tabulations of each primary outcome by these equity-relevant variables, if appropriate for your research, together with the number of observations in each cell. If more detailed cross tabulations are appropriate for your proposed research, please include these as well. This request applies to both primary data collection studies and secondary analysis of routine data, and to causal inference studies as well as descriptive studies; however, if this is not possible due to data limitations then please explain. Due to sample size and other data limitations there may be difficult scientific and/or data security*** judgement calls to make about which breakdowns to report and whether to merge categories to increase counts in particular cells; we ask you to make these judgments yourself, bearing in mind our data curation aim of enabling future evidence synthesis work in pooling results from different studies. We also ask that researchers report breakdowns for the unadjusted as well as adjusted outcomes/effects, as appropriate.
We understand that research projects may employ different methodologies, and focus on different populations. Please explain how the variables and data collection methods chosen are appropriate to the methodologies used.
We ask that you please clearly identify in the research plan section of the application whether your application has a health inequalities component or not and detail the core set of health inequality breakdown data that will be collected, if applicable. Submission of the data collection will be a condition of the final report for all research with relevant methodologies regardless of whether the research has a health inequalities component that will need to be submitted to NIHR PRP when the grant has finished. This should only take a few sentences within the research plan section.
* Table below uses the nine regions in England, further regions can be used if using the UK as the study population. Please report region breakdown for large samples in nationally representative descriptive studies. There is no need to report this for small sample studies, for sub-national studies, or for quasi-experimental studies where it would require time-consuming re-estimation.
** White, Mixed/ Multiple ethnic groups, Asian/ Asian British, Black/ African/ Caribbean/ Black British, Other ethnic group. If the sample size is small then it is fine to report only some of the requested equity breakdowns and to merge some of the sub-groups as appropriate.
*** For guidance on how to handle data security concerns in reporting of sensitive data please see ONS guidance.
Example data table for submission at the end of the funded research project
(N.B. If there is more than one main outcome then you will require more tables and if you adjust your outcome then you will need two tables for the adjusted outcome and unadjusted outcome. For other methodologies, variable vs number of observations may be more appropriate to record participant data). This table is for an example only. It does not contain sub variables and does not illustrate any preference for certain variables, as these will be dependent on the proposed research.
Variable |
Outcome (an appropriate average for this subgroup, usually the mean) |
Number of observations |
Additional information about variation if appropriate, e.g. range, standard deviation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Age |
- | - | - | |
Sex |
- | - | - | |
Gender |
- | - | - | |
Disability |
- | - | - | |
Ethnic Group |
- | - | - | |
IMD Group |
- | - | - | |
Region |
- | - | - | |
Appendix B: Health Inequalities in NIHR PRP Research Q&A Event
This event will take place on Monday, 19 September 2022 from 2:00 - 3:00pm. There will be a discussion from the NIHR PRP, the Department of Health and Social Care and other panellists followed by the opportunity for a Q&A session to help applicants navigate this new request. Please register for the event using the google registration form for the event. Any questions that are not answered during the session will be anonymously answered and published in a FAQ document on the health inequalities webpage.