Ymlaen: The research, innovation and improvement strategy for social care 2024 to 2029

People working in social care go above and beyond to deliver services that improve outcomes for the people of Wales.

Supporting individuals and families in every community, the social care sector protects children, adults and older adults and helps them to do what matters to them.

This happens against a backdrop of growing inequality, increasing demand, rising costs and recruitment pressures, which means we need to continue developing services to respond to the needs of individuals and communities.

We know that research, innovation and improvement can support social care services to make a positive difference, now and into the future.

There’s been a limited system of support in these areas compared to what we see in other public services like education and health. Progress has been made in social care over the last few years thanks to the work of a range of organisations, and there’ll be more opportunities in the future through the commitment of partners and policy developments including the National Office for Social Care.

So it's timely for us to have a shared strategic approach to support the social care sector to achieve the ambitions set out in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

We want to create a culture where evidence is central to delivery and used to inform decisions at all levels of social care, and where people feel inspired and supported to try new things.

Ymlaen – meaning 'forward' in Welsh – is the strategy we've developed together to deliver on those aims.

To achieve this vision, Social Care Wales will work with partners to:

• Set direction: identify shared priorities for research, innovation and improvement so we can direct attention, resource and action to where it’s needed most.
• Connect: ‘join the dots’ between different types of support for research, innovation and improvement in social care.
• Enable: create conditions that enable positive and lasting change in social care. 
• Support: provide direct support to people working in social care to encourage research, innovation and improvement.
• Disrupt: inspire new ways of working.

In 2018, Social Care Wales published the Social care research and development strategy 2018 to 2023 in partnership with Health and Care Research Wales.

It was the first time we’d set out clear goals and actions to support better social care research and develop evidence-enriched practice on a national level.

We’ve achieved a lot with our partners over the life of the first strategy:

• new research has been funded
• we’ve worked with practitioners and people who use care and support to set research priorities
• we’ve made social care data easier to access by bringing it together in one place
• we’ve supported people to make sense of research and get it into practice.

Across Wales, a wide range of organisations, as well as supporting research and evidence-enriched practice, have also been supporting service improvement and innovation in social care.

But we know there’s still a lot to do to help meet the aspirations for care and support set out in the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

The Act set out a collective vision where social services work with citizens and other agencies to support individual and collective well-being, helping to make sure support is person-centred.

The evaluation of the Act (2023) revealed that it still has strong support among citizens and people working in social care in Wales. But there’s frustration that implementation has not been as successful as envisaged.

In developing this strategy, we heard that people want us to address the gap between policy, legislation and strategy and what happens in practice. They want the Act to be delivered for everyone, and for our new strategy to contribute to that goal. Improving people’s lives needs to be at the centre.

Subsequent policies like A Healthier Wales and Decarbonising Social Care have reinforced our ambitions for well-being, environmental sustainability, prevention, and supporting people in their own communities. This means growing our capabilities in reablement, rehabilitation and intermediate care, better integration between our health and social care systems, and supporting the sector to achieve net zero by 2030.

Developing and implementing this strategy is also an opportunity to help realise our aspirations for Wales to be a fairer country for all. This strategy supports work by a wide range of partners to contribute to the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, LGBTQ+ Action plan and More than Just Words Welsh language plan to make a measurable change to current and future generations.

There’s great work going on across social care in Wales. We want to support this by establishing an approach to research, innovation and improvement that's centred on working in collaboration. Agreeing priorities together helps us decide where we should focus our collective efforts.

We also want to strengthen the social care ‘voice’. People working in social care told us they don’t feel their interests are well represented in the public sector. We can be an authoritative voice backed by engagement and evidence to help get those interests heard and taken into account. This is critical to supporting well-being in communities.

By promoting the contribution, importance and values of social care, we can influence change.

Our goal is to embed evidence-enriched decision-making across all levels of social care. We value evidence from different sources, including:

• research, from both practitioners and specialised researchers
• experience and wisdom of people who use care and support and carers
• data and intelligence
• knowledge and wisdom of practitioners.

People said they want a culture where research, innovation and improvement are valued and central to delivery.

Delivering the vision of this strategy for people leading, developing and delivering social care will need strong collaboration across a wide range of partner organisations. Social Care Wales will lead this new strategy and work with partners to deliver it.

The first strategy was developed by Social Care Wales and Health and Care Research Wales. For the new strategy, a wider set of partners across research, innovation and improvement have collaborated. Together, we’re working on an implementation plan that’ll outline the activities we’ll each commit to. We want a strong collective sense of ownership for the strategy and its delivery.

Social Care Wales will keep track of the implementation, and will bring partners and stakeholders together regularly to share progress and agree our future work. We want this to be a ‘living’ strategy, with the flexibility to respond to what social care needs. The implementation needs to be an ongoing conversation, not something we report on from time to time.

To do this, we’ll create two groups from our partner organisations and include the people in social care we’re aiming to support. The groups will be:

• an oversight group of senior leaders to provide advice and help unblock barriers to progress across our partner organisations
• a community of ‘implementers’ from across partners, to create an environment of active sharing, learning and doing.

We’re well-placed to drive this work because we lead research, workforce development, improvement, innovation and workforce regulation in social care for Wales.

We’re already doing a lot to help people working in social care to connect, develop skills and knowledge, and to access research and data in ways that work for them.

Our new strategy aims to make each partner’s contribution to research, innovation and improvement support clearer. This is an opportunity for all of us to ‘join the dots’ for people in social care and do the hard work of finding the right support on their behalf.

We’ll listen to and promote the full, rich and diverse range of voices involved in social care, especially those of people who access care and support and aren’t often listened to or prioritised. We’ll champion equality, diversity and inclusion and advocate for anti-racist systems, structures and practices.

We’ll co-design our support with people involved in social care. Our primary focus is on the people leading, developing and delivering services because that’s how we believe we can achieve our collective vision. This will help us use the knowledge and experience of practitioners to focus on what matters and bring about change that works in practice for people accessing care and support.

We’ll work with partner organisations to take collective action, where it’s most needed, to make the biggest impact. We’ll avoid duplication and try to ‘join the dots’.

We’ll always learn through our work in developing and delivering this strategy. We’ll learn with and from our partners to create a support system that works well and can adjust to changes. We’ll also learn from people working in and using care and support, and from research and data.

We’ll work with partners to make the most of technology and digital developments to support strengths-based social care. This will include exploring the ethics and appropriateness of using digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, to develop and deliver social care services.

We’ll adapt and respond to changing circumstances, needs and new knowledge. We’ll be aware of and respond to changing priorities and pressures experienced by those delivering services. We’ll evaluate the strategy as it’s developed and put into practice, and be curious and open about new and sustainable ways of doing things.

Our strategy is designed to be delivered together with our partners. We’ll know this is the case if:

• partners understand their contribution to the strategy and take collective ownership for delivering the shared vision
• new and improved partnerships emerge from the strategy through shared knowledge, learning and resources
• people working in social care access the support available through partners.
  

The strategy needs to contribute to positive change for people working in, and on, social care in Wales. We want to promote a culture of evidence-enriched decision-making, as well as the space, encouragement, value and funding to enable continued growth and improvement that ultimately will make a positive difference to care and support in Wales. We’ll know this has happened if, on a local, regional and national level:

• people working in social care have more opportunities to share, reflect and learn together
• innovations are shared and pockets of promising practice spread
• people working in and leading social care have the confidence and skills to:
  • use evidence in practice and decision making
  • lead and contribute to both improvement and innovation in everyday practice, service development and transformational change
  • evaluate their contribution and demonstrate the difference their work has made
  • lead cultures that make considered, positive risk-taking possible.
• people in social care have the digital skills needed for their work
• we have accessible and effective processes to support digital innovation
• people working in social care know where to access research evidence
• gaps in data and research are identified and addressed
• evidence from evaluation is gathered and shared
• there’s improved availability and use of social care data.

We need to develop a better understanding of the impact of our work. We also need to continuously learn and adapt what we do to maximise the positive difference we can make to people delivering care and support.

We’ll use a method called contribution analysis to capture our impact and tell the story of what we achieve together through this strategy. That means looking at how what we’ve done contributes towards our goal.

We’ll evaluate our impact as we go and be open and transparent about what is and isn’t working. We’ll be flexible, using what we learn to adapt our approach where needed.