Category: Social Care

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

JCVI update on advice for COVID-19 vaccination of children aged 5 to 11.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2022.
[JCVI advises a non-urgent offer of two 10 mcg doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty®) to children aged 5 to 11 years of age who are not in a clinical risk group. The intention of this offer is to increase the immunity of vaccinated individuals against severe COVID-19 in advance of a potential future wave of COVID-19. Published 16 February 2022]

Growing problems, in depth: The impact of Covid-19 on health care for children and young people in England.
Quality Watch; 2022.
[“…The sharp increase in children and young people with mental health problems is a serious concern. Services are facing unprecedented levels of demand, and young people are waiting longer to receive mental health care. In particular, there has been a surge in eating disorder cases, and conditions are deteriorating to the extent that a greater number of children and young people are attending A&E departments…”]

Social care reform: an independent review by Baroness Cavendish.
Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC); 2022.
[A report looking at how the government can lock in the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic to build a more robust, sustainable and joined-up system of social care.]

Covid 19

Current awareness updates

Latest data reinforces the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations in pregnant women.
UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA); 2022.
[The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) urges pregnant women to get vaccinated as latest data reinforces previous findings on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy.]

Coronavirus: adult social care key issues and sources.
House of Commons Library; 2022.
[This briefing provides an overview of key issues facing the adult social care sector during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and provides links to some of the key official guidance for the sector. Updated 28 January 2022.]

Measures implemented in the school setting to contain the COVID-19 pandemic: a rapid review. [Abstract]
Krishnaratne S. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2022;1:CD015029.
[OBJECTIVES: To assess the effectiveness of measures implemented in the school setting to safely reopen schools, or keep schools open, or both, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular focus on the different types of measures implemented in school settings and the outcomes used to measure their impacts on transmission-related outcomes, healthcare utilisation outcomes, other health outcomes as well as societal, economic, and ecological outcomes. ]


Social Care 360

New report

Source: The King’s Fund Health Management and Policy Alert

This year’s Social Care 360 report uses the latest available data (2019/20) to describe the key trends in adult social care as the Covid-19 pandemic struck and to suggest what the impact of the pandemic might be. It paints quite a bleak picture of adult social care in England, with many key indicators already going in the wrong direction before the pandemic struck.

Digital Technology

How is this shaping health and social care?

Source: The King’s Fund

This report, commissioned by the Health Foundation, provides a summary of evidence for how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, smartphones, wearable devices and the internet of things are being used within care settings around the world.

The authors analyse the available evidence around the use of these technologies to support leaders in health and care to engage in long-term thinking about the role of digital technology. The report looks back at recent developments in digital technology in the health and care system before the Covid-19 pandemic, supplemented by the Fund’s evidence-gathering on how digital technologies have been used during the pandemic, in England in particular. It also considers a set of potential futures to distil factors driving change and what this means for leaders now. 

Social work and social care

Taking a strengths-based approach; a literature review

Source: The King’s Fund Health Management and Policy Alert

The primary aim of this review is to examine the development and the potential of strengths-based models in social work and the social care sector. The literature review will address questions around how these approaches impact on practice, and what this means for individuals in receipt of social care services and their carers or families.

This review identifies three overarching features of the terrain:
Generally, there are three broad groupings of literature: conceptual material; material on models; and grey literature; plus a small number of evaluative papers


Strengths-based approaches are comparatively more prevalent in social work than social care (which may not be surprising given its origins).

Strengths-based approaches are being embraced by policy makers but questions remain about: its definition (how it is distinct from other approaches, and how it should be conceptualised); its effectiveness and feasibility (including its intersection with local authority eligibility thresholds); and how it should/can be evaluated.

NIHR; Feb 2021

The Department of Health and Social Care’s legislative proposals for a Health and Care Bill

Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all

This White Paper sets out legislative proposals for a Health and Care Bill. The proposals are designed to support the health and care system to work together to provide high-quality health and care, so people can live longer, healthier, active and more independent lives.

The IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities

A new year’s message

Source: The King’s Fund Health and Wellbeing Bulletin

This report examines the impact of the pandemic on educational, economic, social and health inequalities in the UK. It outlines data and evidence on the groups that have been most heavily impacted by widening inequalities and Covid-19.

The IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities: a New Year’s message

Key findings include:

  • The COVID crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the high- and low-paid and between graduates and non-graduates.
  • The crisis has hit the self-employed and others in insecure and non-traditional forms of employment especially hard.
  • Educational inequalities will almost certainly have been exacerbated by the crisis
  • Between March and July, mortality rates from COVID-19 were twice as high in the most deprived areas as in the least deprived.
  • The crisis has had very different impacts on different ethnic groups.
  • Through 2020, pensioners have on average reported becoming financially better off, whilst the young have borne the brunt of job and income loss. (The IFS Deaton Review of Inequalities)

To find out more click here.

State of Care

CQC annual assessment of health and social care

State of Care 2019/20.
Care Quality Commission (CQC); 2020.
[CQC annual assessment of health care and social care in England. The report looks at the trends, shares examples of good and outstanding care, and highlights where care needs to improve. It describes the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, including the unequal impact, DOLS and innovation.]

Health and Social Care Select Committee

Delivering core NHS services during the pandemic and beyond

This report aims to catalogue the impact and unprecedented challenge caused by Covid-19 to the provision of essential services. It calls for urgent action to assess and tackle a backlog of appointments and an unknown patient demand for all health services, specifically across cancer treatments, mental health services, dentistry services, GP services and elective surgery. It also looks at the case made for routine testing of all NHS staff.

For more information click here.

Covid-19

Surviving the pandemic: new challenges for adult social care and the social care market

For the past decade there has been a constant cry from the adult social care sector that it is underfunded and that it is on the brink of collapse. This discussion paper looks at how councils have avoided the predicted collapse over the period of austerity and explores new problems that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic. How can the care provider sector survive after the pandemic?

Read the paper here