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Research on residential care- and extracare-supported housing conducted by Swansea's Centre for Innovative Ageing (CIA) has impacted on the development and reconfiguration of supported housing services in Wales. Our research on care home closures has directly led to Welsh Government (WG) consultation on guidance regarding `escalating concerns' for care home closures, and the Independent Advisory Group on Local Authority Closure of Care Homes has recommended that our amendments to escalating concerns should be adopted in relation to care home closures due to strategic/policy reasons. Work is now underway by the WG to publish revised guidance in relation to care home closures based on our research. Three local authorities (Swansea, Vale of Glamorgan and Wrexham) have used our research on the challenges associated with extracare provision to inform the development of future services.
Research into participative practice and well-being with older people has contributed directly to the development and application of an ethic of care in policy and service delivery, as well as to practices in older people's participation, locally, nationally and internationally. The research has directly impacted on practitioners and practice developments in services for older people, with learning resources (co-designed with practitioners and older people) being used in professional education and training across the UK and in New Zealand. An innovative participatory methodology has both enhanced older people's participation locally and been adopted more widely by university community research collaborators working to enhance older people's citizenship and well-being (eg in Netherlands). Research has directly informed policy concerning older people's needs assessments by recognising the centrality of relationships to well-being in older age. The well-being research involving collaboration with service users and providers has been described as `exemplary' by the leading national charity Age UK.
The law regulating social care services for disabled and elderly adults, and their carers, had been unreformed for over 60 years. Reform had been inhibited by the law's complexity, the rapid growth in community dependency (due to deinstitutionalisation and the growth in the numbers of elderly people) and the lack of political consensus on the direction reform should take. Fundamental demographic and societal change over the last 20 years has made the failure of the legislation to address the support needs of unpaid carers and those for whom they care an even more pressing issue. As a result of a sustained period of research, academic publication and Parliamentary action by Clements, this area of law is now being reformed. Both the Westminster Parliament and the National Assembly in Wales have been scrutinising Public Bills (the Care Bill 2013 in England and, in Wales, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Bill 2013). Despite significant social policy research on this fundamental issue, Clements was almost alone in highlighting the legal dimensions. He thereby made a major contribution to public discourse on this question and played a key role in bringing about legal change.
Professor Faundez's research has set out how legal reform projects should be designed and implemented in order to be successful in the context of existing local conditions and to ensure access to justice for indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups. His work as policy advisor both to development agencies (the World Bank, the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), and the Inter-American Development Bank) and to Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) (Amnesty International, the World Justice Project) has helped these organisations broaden their approach to the design, implementation and evaluation of legal reform projects. The range of his publications - from academic articles to specially commissioned reports - has ensured a fruitful dialogue with practitioners in the field of law and governance.
The research has had significant impact in the UK on the development of social and spiritual support for people at the end of life and their families. With Professor Holloway as Social Care Lead on the National End of Life Care Programme (NEoLCP) since 2009, the research has underpinned the launch of a framework for the delivery of social care at the end of life which is now in its second phase of implementation. The framework is endorsed by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and has led to local and regional Action Plans and social care practice initiatives. The research on spirituality has led to scoping and training initiatives in healthcare practice and in the funerals industry within the UK and internationally.
Research conducted by Durham University on the reconciliation of free speech with rights of privacy and reputation has significantly affected contemporary law and policy around the law of privacy, media injunctions and libel reform. Specifically, it has:
(1) resulted in a substantial contribution to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Libel Working Group and hence to the Defamation Bill 2012 which followed (now the Defamation Act 2013);
(2) strongly influenced the report of Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights on the human rights aspects of that Bill;
(3) influenced a major parliamentary inquiry on privacy;
(4) helped change Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidelines on prosecuting the media for privacy-related offences including phone-hacking;
(5) been used in argument by an NGO intervening in two important cases before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).
Dr Penny Vera-Sanso's two research projects, Ageing, Poverty and Neoliberalism in Urban South India (2007-10) and Ageing and Poverty: the working lives of older people in India (2012-13), have had significant impacts on public debate and public policy in relation to the rights and well-being of people aged 60 and over. The research raised awareness and understanding, in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and in India more widely, of older people's poverty and their contribution to the economy through their paid and unpaid work. This led directly to changes in state policy on pensions in Tamil Nadu, and influenced campaigns for older people's pensions, livelihoods and rights within India and internationally.
A key challenge for UK Government is to identify how older generations can continue to live independently in their own homes. The UK's changing demographics, recent increases in the cost of institutional care coupled with its declining availability make this a priority for policy makers. A twelve stage research programme undertaken by Professor Tinker has investigated how improved home care and assistive technologies including aids and adaptations could be employed to enable older people to remain at home longer. It examined and costed these options and provided recommendations on how they, and other specialised housing types such as sheltered housing, could be provided. Central government, local authorities and housing associations have employed her findings in revising their approaches to housing support for this rapidly growing population. Her findings have recently been employed by governments in Europe, Canada, the USA, Australia and the Far East in their reappraisals of policy on assisted living in later life.
The Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) at the University of Manchester (UoM) has run a programme of research examining community care of older people since 1996. The findings have informed key government decision-making around two important national policy initiatives between 2008 and 2013: (1) the development and implementation of Personal Budgets in Social and Health Care and (2) National Strategies to improve Dementia Services. This has affected the national provision of social care for older people and other adult social care users. In 2011-12, there were over 1.2 million people in England receiving social care affected by these policy changes (over 800,000 aged 65+), with a cost of £6,600m spent on their care (NHS and Social Care Information Centre).