King's College London

Unit Research Associate Chloe Waterman was part of the team awarded a European Social Services Award this week in the Research and Evaluation category. Led by Prof Robin Miller (Birmingham), the Evaluation of Community Led Support published its final report in the summer. The award was made in Lisbon, Portugal by the European Social Network on 4 November.

About Community Led Support

Community Led Support (CLS), developed by the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi), is a strengths-based approach to social care designed to empower adults with disabilities, mental health issues, and long-term conditions to achieve what is important to them by building on their existing strengths and community networks. A two-year independent evaluation involving an interdisciplinary team was undertaken to provide objective measure of the impact of CLS and understand how they achieved change. The research project was co-designed with the change programme, participating local authorities, and with people with lived experience of social care. It focussed in particular on culture change, distributive leadership, co-production and the overall impacts of CLS. The evaluation identified aspects of the programme that were working well and areas that needed improvement. Overall, it showed that the 30 local authority areas which engaged in the CLS programme showed positive changes in their social care assessment and care management activities compared with non-CLS areas.

Go to the Community Led Support website.