At the Forum in November

The Home Care Research Forum provides an opportunity for researchers, people working in the field and others with an interest in homecare to gather and discuss current exciting research and to establish new networks and connections.

Join us for the final event of the year. November's Home Care Research Forum invites two exciting talks spanning topics from academic and industry speakers. We welcome guest speakers Professor Carol Atkinson and Dr Katie Willocks, Manchester Metropolitan University (Talk 1), and Laura Wood from Invisible Creations (Talk 2).

*This event is free to attend and will take place virtually, via Zoom from 2-4pm (UK) on Wednesday 8th November 2023. A Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees before the event.

Speakers & talks

Talk 1: Professor Carol Atkinson and Dr Katie Willocks, Faculty of Business and Law at Manchester Metropolitan University

Title: Pay variation in adult social care

Summary: This research explores variations in pay in England for adult social care workers. The research has three parts. The first works with statistics provided by Skills for Care to investigate local conditions, local authority buying processes, pay variation and their impact on workers, for example, leaving their jobs or developing skills. The second is a survey of organisations that provide adult social care which explores their pay practices and identifies good practice. The final part involves interviews with managers of care organisations and with care workers themselves to explore their views on pay variations and the consequences for care workers.

In this session, we will give an overview of progress to date, with a particular focus on early, emerging themes from interviews with home care providers and care workers. These are preliminary and we would like to discuss and ‘sense check’ these with Forum members.

Talk 2: Laura Wood, Invisible Creations

Title: Design for Dignity: Homes Fit for our Future

Summary: Safe, accessible housing has the power to maintain and even improve health and wellbeing, and social connections, as people grow older. By recognising the critical link between health and housing and creating innovative solutions to adapt homes to meet changing needs we have the chance to dramatically improve people’s quality of life.

Invisible Creations® is all about designing for dignity. Our aim is to design inclusive, attractive and dual-purpose products to support people to live more independently and well for longer. We worked with a range of people to really understand their needs, but also to understand their desires and aspirations. We wanted to shift the narrative around ageing and accessibility. We create products that are designed to remove the negative stigma so often associated with current assistive and accessible products. We believe homes should be a haven, not a hospital and products designed to help people remain independent should be attractive, not clinical. We combine everyday household items, such as toilet roll holders, shelves and planters, with support rails to produce a range of grab rails in disguise, providing people with all the help they need to get around the home without needing to compromise on style.

Booking

Booking via Eventbrite is open.

This series

This event is part of the Home Care Research Forum, convened by Monica Leverton of the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce. See all Policy Research Unit events.