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 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 difference does professional development of our workforces (including for specialist and support workforces and early years practitioners) make to children’s outcomes?
- Reducing victimisation and repeat victimisation in relation to domestic abuse
- How can we better understand the impact of interventions delivered in the community? What timing and sequencing of services, interventions and support works to sustain positive outcomes for individuals? For example, accommodation; employment; relationship, family and peer support?
- What works to reduce reoffending for different groups? For example, those with mental health problems, or those repeatedly convicted of low-level offences?
- How can strength-based approaches nurture positive attitudes to rehabilitation that guard against reoffending? What approaches enable the development of pro-social identity?
- How do we best assist early advice and support services to deal with changes in legal need in the population and the demand for services? How do we measure the impact of early advice on short, medium, and longer-term outcomes, and the economic costs and benefits?
- When people seek advice, how do we ensure they find useful and accessible information that empowers them – either towards self-help, or to access the most appropriate services for their needs?
- Which groups struggle most to resolve their justice problems, either through inaction or difficulty accessing the justice system and wider support services?
- How effective are support structures, for example intermediaries, in facilitating access to justice for vulnerable people, including victims and witnesses?
- Intervention programmes for offenders who view online indecent images of children.
- The elements of preventative programmes that are most effective, with whom, when and why.
- 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?
- 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?
- What can we learn from best practice in public service delivery from across the UK?
- • What are the drivers, barriers, costs, and benefits of movements across our workforces?
- What lessons need to be learned about the respective roles and contributions of the public, private and third sectors in the design and delivery of local public services?
- What does the evidence tell us about what works to reduce and prevent homelessness, including virtual and digital interventions? What are the most robust impact evaluation methods for assessing the impact of our specific policy interventions in this complex area?
- What interventions are most effective at helping people to sustain tenancies after receiving support?
- What lessons can be taken from early prevention strategies targeted at vulnerable groups (e.g. those at risk from domestic violence, rough sleeping and homelessness)? What implications do they have for effective policy design?
- How can services be better co-ordinated, integrated, timed and targeted to help vulnerable groups? What is the role of coordinating services for people at risk of homelessness who are being discharged from institutional settings (hospital, prison, the military)?
- What is most effective in framing and targeting policies and programmes so they reach vulnerable black and minority ethnic groups, and increase take-up by those most likely to benefit?
- Beyond the UK, what can we learn from other countries in developing predictive models to help us target prevention more effectively at vulnerable groups?
- Who is most/least effectively helped by the Homeless Reduction Act? What does that mean for how interventions are best targeted?
- Which elements of a multi-agency/multi-departmental approach to addressing homelessness have the biggest impacts?
- What is the impact of housing access, affordability and associated support on homelessness?
- What are the best ways of ensuring local growth interventions benefit intended beneficiaries in an area (e.g. disadvantaged local residents) rather than inward commuters?
- What can we learn from the COVID-19 shielding programme and other programmes that supported our most vulnerable groups during the pandemic? What were the costs and benefits of different interventions?
- What does the evidence show about how the pandemic has affected people’s preferences about where they live and where they are able to work (e.g. rural areas versus cities)? How are these preferences different across cohorts, such as socio-economic, and locations? Are any such trends likely to be long-term?
- 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?
- How do we incorporate the full spectrum of natural capital and the value of the benefits it provides into policy development, analysis, and appraisal? What are the tools we need to make use of robust economic values easier for everyone – across government and beyond?
- 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?
- How do we encourage the design of longer lasting and easily repairable consumer items?
- How does investment in the environment bring benefits to society, including through health, wellbeing, and natural capital? Who are the beneficiaries and how do we quantify and communicate those benefits – and costs?
- How can we encourage or incentivise behavioural change to achieve positive outcomes for the environment, and how can we enable appropriate informed adaptive management with communities?
- What makes communities resilient to natural hazards and other crises? What can we learn from the coronavirus pandemic about the loss of resilience and protecting vulnerable communities to inform future response to crises? What are the important social dimensions for achieving environmental and infrastructure resilience?
- Climate projections (for example UK Climate Projections 18) indicate increased climate variability and extreme events (storms, heat waves, drought) in the future. How will these changes impact natural and human systems? How can we protect against damage caused by such increased variability?
- 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?
- 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 better support families and children to keep children safe and, where possible, with their birth families?
- 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?
- What are the best ways to encourage engagement and awareness of the State Pension and Pensioner Benefits?
- 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?
- 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?
- Supporting partners and communities to reduce crime and vulnerability
- • What are the features of the design and delivery of cost-effective professional development, at scale? Why are these features effective?
- • What are the characteristics and motivations of returners to the education and social care workforces?
- Supporting those who are admitted, both for their own and for wider benefit.
- Interventions to reduce different types of child sexual abuse.
- What is the future need/demand for supported housing and how do its costs/cost-effectiveness compare with alternative types of support?
- 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 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 are the impacts of supervision within different premises, for example community hubs? Can these assist with access to services post-supervision?
- What constitutes an optimal caseload mix for probation staff, to appropriately balance risk levels across their workload, whilst delivering the most effective support for individuals, with multiple and complex needs, under their supervision?
- How are tribunals affected by the policies and services of other government departments, and how can we better understand upstream decision-making processes? For example, regarding welfare policy.
- How can we better isolate the impact of multiple interventions within an individual's time in prison? How can we better route individuals onto appropriate programmes in a timely way?
- Where are the notable gaps in the provision of legal advice and support, and how can we best intervene to help fill them? How do different advice and support services interact, share information, and refer individuals between organisations?
- How can we better understand drivers of demand in the justice system, so that we support early problem resolution where appropriate, whilst ensuring the formal justice system is accessible to those who need it?
- What impact do different levels of supervision – such as staff (including attrition), frequency, length, intensity – have on rehabilitation and outcomes?
- 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 could machine learning and predictive analytics be used robustly and ethically to create claimant personas/segments for disability benefits?
- What is claimants’ experience of the welfare disputes process (Mandatory Reconsiderations and Appeals) and how does it affect them?
- 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?
- Relationships and trust: How can we help ensure relationships between individuals in the justice system are mutually effective and built on trust? How can procedural justice, for example, help develop relationships, build trust, and create and sustain outcomes for individuals?
- How do staff qualifications and experience levels impact the delivery of programmes and their outcomes?
- How can we better understand the role of staff engagement, oversight and support – particularly managerial support – for those working with high-risk individuals?
- How can we better understand the future demand and needs of our workforce – including learning and development needs – to ensure effective workload management, particularly in relation to serious and high-risk cases?
- How effective are different prison types, categories and functions, such as reception, training and resettlement, in meeting their core objectives?
- How do geographical and demographic factors affect legal aid awareness and uptake? How does legal aid uptake vary by eligibility?
- How do we improve legal awareness and capability in the population, so that people are able to identify they have a legal problem and seek appropriate help?
- How can we minimise the harm to those engaging with the family justice system? What factors affect the effectiveness of Domestic Violence Protection Orders and other measures in the Domestic Abuse Bill?
- How do orders made in private family law proceedings – for example, resolving disputes about child or financial arrangements – affect individual and family outcomes? What works, for whom, to deliver positive and sustainable outcomes?
- What are the long-term impacts on children’s developmental outcomes because of placements made under public law orders in care proceedings? Including care orders, placement orders, and special guardianship orders?
- How can we better understand how problems link, interact, and reinforce, and how people move through different systems as they attempt to resolve them? Including unemployment, debt, housing, or family issues.
- What are people’s experiences of dealing with justice problems? How can they be supported to access and navigate the justice system, enforce their rights, and achieve the best outcomes? How does this vary by problem type, level of legal capability, and awareness of support?
- Understanding which individuals are at risk of becoming offenders (and/or victims), for what reasons and at what stages of their lives.
- Equipping refugees for life in the UK and for returning home if/when they can.
- Impacts of different types of new arrivals on local communities, the economy and public services (monetised and non-monetised costs and benefits).
- Improving outcomes for victims and survivors, including children.
- How might the COVID-19 pandemic affect homelessness and rough sleeping in the longer term?
- How is the strategic regeneration of large areas best managed over the long term?
- 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 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 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?
- 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?