Social services
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- What are the characteristics of the specialist care workforce (e.g. social workers, children's homes, and early help providers)? What are the barriers to specialist staff recruitment and retention, and how can we overcome these?
- How effective are the key reforms set out in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ in response to the Care Review that seek to improve the provision of children's social care across Local Authorities? These include recruitment of foster carers, support for kinship carers and provision of children's care placements.
- How does a child’s journey through different systems of support, and the different qualities of the experiences along the way, serve to protect or expose them to involvement in serious youth violence?
- How do we improve parental access to, and engagement with, family services? How do we improve connections and relationships between parents and professionals (e.g. through parental networks)?
- How effective are the Family Hubs pilots in improving outcomes for young children and their families? What works best to engage families and deliver services?
- How does receipt of benefit payments affect disabled people and people with long-term health conditions? What impact does it have on independence, financial security, employment, wellbeing?
- What will be the future level and mix of demand for different DWP services through different channels, (digital/online and video, phone, face-to-face)? Does effectiveness vary for different groups? How effective are digital/virtual services (for example labour market support, drug and alcohol interventions, parenting interventions) compared to face-to-face provision, in helping people move into work?
- What are the best ways to encourage engagement and awareness of the State Pension and Pensioner Benefits?
- How could machine learning and predictive analytics be used robustly and ethically to create claimant personas/segments for disability benefits?
- How can DWP support carers in their caring roles? Including any return to work or progression in the labour market?
- What are the most effective ways to engage employers, health professionals, employees and other relevant stakeholders to retain and support disabled people and people with health conditions in employment? What policies and processes do employers have in place that could influence employee health, well-being and productivity (such as sick pay, access to occupational health services, health insurance provision)?
- How effective has government’s cost of living support been?
- What is most effective in ensuring employment support operates in a joined-up way with other forms of support?
- What is the prevalence of different pedagogical approaches in different early years settings, including maintained nurseries and nursery provision in primary schools? How does this vary across the workforce? Which of these approaches have the greatest impact on development?
- What is known about drivers and barriers to parental engagement in their children’s education in the home? How can improvements in the home-learning environment mitigate the effect of disadvantage on pupils’ attainment?
- What are children’s end-to-end routes through the care system, and how does this impact on later life outcomes, such as educational achievement, wellbeing and labour market outcomes?
- How can we better quantify and measure the benefits of social work assessment, training and development in terms of child outcomes such as wellbeing and educational achievement?
- What is claimants’ experience of the welfare disputes process (Mandatory Reconsiderations and Appeals) and how does it affect them?
- What support do children and victims of domestic abuse living in temporary accommodation and domestic abuse safe accommodation need and to what extent is this being delivered?
- What data, evidence and analytical tools (preventative analytics) are required to identify populations at risk of homelessness, such as families facing eviction, victims of domestic abuse, or individuals with precarious work conditions? What are the best means of outreach and engagement with at-risk populations?
- What are the most cost-effective ways to help where children are at risk as victims or perpetrators of crime? Does this vary for different groups of children, such as children with care experience, and by place?
- How can we best support children and adults who lack or have lacked family support (such as those who have experienced care) to maximise their opportunities to live a healthy and rewarding life?
- What family focused solutions work to ensure that children and their parents have the support needed to meet their basic needs for housing security and quality of life?
- How can we ensure that multi-agency responses are coordinated effectively to reduce, and ideally prevent, young people’s exposure to and experience of harm? • How do we ensure that front line staff have access to all the relevant information from across systems and agencies, to ensure effective decision making in provision of support?
- • How can we ensure staff maintain stable relationships with the children and families that they work with where appropriate to counter disruption in other aspects of their lives?
- • How effective are changes to the (children's) residential care market in ensuring the right number and types of good quality, stable registered places across the country, which provide good value for public money?
- How can we better support families and children to keep children safe and, where possible, with their birth families?
- What works best to identify and intervene early to support vulnerable children and their families before they enter the social care system?
- How can we work most effectively in partnership with others to ensure that additional needs (especially regarding Special Education Needs and Disabilities and mental health) are identified and addressed as early as possible?
- What are the most cost-effective ways to support parents and carers to help their children to learn and develop (from early years through to adulthood), including through play?
- How can education and other services best support parents and carers to help their children learn outside formal education settings (including in other locations beyond the home when the home learning environment is not conducive to learning)?
- How well-used are available family services (such as family hubs and children’s centres services) and how representative are these users? How can we make these services more attractive and easier to access for those parents and carers whose children stand to benefit the most?
- How do we improve connections and relationships between parents and professionals (e.g. through parental networks)?
- Which parenting programmes are most effective, especially in engaging disadvantaged parents and families with a social worker? Are they equally accessible to all families, including those that are hard to reach, and easily scalable?
- What more can be done to best support families with children under the age of 2, to give those children, particularly the most disadvantaged, the best start in life?
- Which early childhood services, or combinations of services, are most effective in improving the (health, cognitive, socio-emotional, and educational) development of disadvantaged children before age 5? How does this vary by children’s age (for example 0-2 and 3-5) and for different domains of learning (such as literacy and maths)?
- How can we identify those who will not achieve a good level of development at age 5, to help target early childhood services before school entry?
- How can we best develop tools to assess development before school-age, so we can measure important changes in educational outcomes over time and understand the relative impact of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and home learning environment?
- How can parental engagement in their children's early education best be enhanced, especially for those parents in disadvantaged households, and how does this vary for mothers and fathers?
- Where children cannot live with their birth parents, how do we support and enable others (including wider family networks) to provide good quality care which leads to better life outcomes? • How does this vary for different family types, including both formal and informal kinship carers, foster carers, and children who leave care under an adoption order or special guardianship order?
- How can we best develop and inspire our workforces across all our sectors to improve children’s outcomes, informed by the best available evidence?
- How and when are our specialist and support workforces (such as Specialist Educational Needs Coordinators, Educational Psychologists, and finance professionals) deployed? How does this vary and why (for example across regions, for different specialist workers such as children’s home staff), and between the state and independent school sectors)?
- What factors influence labour market choices and how do they vary for different groups, parts of the workforce, including at a sub-national level? This includes the role of non-pay factors such as workload, wellbeing and flexible working and their relative importance .
- • What influence do practices such as professional supervision/reflective practice have on staff retention and how widespread are these practices?
- • How can we promote resilience and wellbeing among our workforce cost-effectively?
- • What are the drivers, barriers, costs, and benefits of movements across our workforces?
- • What are the characteristics and motivations of returners to the education and social care workforces?
- • What are the features of the design and delivery of cost-effective professional development, at scale? Why are these features effective?
- What professional development is most appropriate at different career stages? How does it vary between different parts of the workforce and for different groups?
- • What new or additional knowledge and skills (including what level of knowledge and skills) do our workforces need (including in equipping our workforces to support children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities)?
- • What development opportunities are available for our workforces, how well do they meet our needs, and how attractive and accessible are they? Given the importance of professional development to retention, what are the best ways to ensure there are sufficient attractive and accessible development opportunities which engage the right people?
- • How do we best update our workforce skills and knowledge to reflect changing needs and evidence (for example regarding knowledge of climate change, and knowledge and skills in using technology)?
- What difference does professional development of our workforces (including for specialist and support workforces and early years practitioners) make to children’s outcomes?
- What can we learn from other parts of the public sector, other sectors, and other programmes (e.g. NHS, parenting programmes) about professional training to develop knowledge and skills (e.g. about child development, on behaviour management, on how to improve leadership skills, how to improve workforce wellbeing, and how to use evidence)?
- • How can we equip parents, families, and carers to support children through safe access and use of technology outside educational settings?
- How can we harness the potential benefits of technological advances (such as increased productivity across our sectors, or better-informed decisions by learners about opportunities), while keeping children safe?
- • What are the potential long-term opportunities and challenges of AI (artificial intelligence) use across our sectors, and at all education stages?
- • How has the increased accessibility of generative AI influenced our sectors (including schools, colleges etc)?
- What approaches or innovations are needed to support the efficient and safe handling of data within education and children’s social care settings which leads to better life outcomes?
- What are the security risks associated with AI and other digital technology within the educational and children’s social care estates? What is best practice for cyber security in our institutions how can we scale this across the estate?
- • What are the best ways to ensure that AI and other digital technology are used safely, ethically, and in ways that protect the data and interests of children, our workforce, and bodies? What forms of collaborative working, regulation and enforcement may be appropriate?
- • What models of management and professional development of frontline and back office roles support efficient and safe use of data and technology including AI?
- • What resources are required to ensure the safe and efficient handling of data in education and children’s social care?
- • What innovative approaches to data in education and children’s social care could increase staff capacity and reduce workload?
- How can our estates (including school nurseries, schools and publicly provided children’s homes) provide a suitable, healthy, and resilient environment for learning and to deliver our Opportunity Mission and how can this be done in the most cost-efficient way?
- • What mitigations are needed in our buildings, and what mitigations are used, to minimise the spread of infectious diseases and contribute towards a healthy and resilient environment?
- • What factors contribute to the air quality in and around schools and other educational and social care settings, and what can the education and social care sectors do to address air quality in and around those settings?
- • How can staff best be supported in dealing with challenging behaviour, in ways that reliably reduce disruption to peers, improve pupil wellbeing, behaviour and attainment, and aid staff retention?