Older people: care and self-funding experiences

The number of older people funding their care has increased dramatically. Changes in the way statutory social care is organised and the impacts of austerity measures, including successive cuts in social care funding and tightening of eligibility criteria, have had an impact. Older people’s perspectives on self-funding are absent in policy and practice debates and within research. The Wellcome Trust has awarded a grant of £666,918 for this project about self-funded social care for older people. The project is a collaboration between University of 映客直播, University of Birmingham and University of Lincoln and the overall lead is Dr Lizzie Ward at the University of 映客直播. The project will run for three years and will take an innovative approach to researching self-funding through co-production with older people and knowledge exchange with key stakeholders – local health and social care commissioners and providers and practitioners in three research sites: 映客直播 and Hove, Solihull and Lincolnshire.

Project timeframe

The project will run from April 2017 to March 2020.

Project aims

The project aims to understand ethical dimensions of self-funded care by bringing older people’s lived experiences to the forefront and by seeking the views of informal carers and family members who are supporting older people, and those who commission and provide care services to get a complete picture of the current situation. The key goals are to:

  • understand older people’s experiences of self-funding
  • develop theoretical understanding of the ethical issues involved in self-funded care
  • engage with older people, practitioners, health and care services’ commissioners and providers to transform understanding of self-funded care and produce accessible outputs to impact policy and practice.

Project findings and impact

What do we hope to achieve?

By building relationships between academic researchers, older people, practitioners and key stakeholders we aim to produce knowledge and understanding about self-funded care that will lead to the production of creative outputs. These will be co-designed with our co-researchers and community partners and could include, for example, resources and materials in a variety of formats to inform older citizens about the implications of self-funding; conveying clear messages and targeting a range of audiences about the implications of self-funding for policy and practice.

Research team

Dr Lizzie Ward, University of 映客直播

Professor Mo Ray, University of Lincoln

Dr Denise Tanner, University of Birmingham

Research fellows for each of the three sites

In each research site we will work with a local community partner and team of older co-researchers and involve local stakeholders in knowledge exchange workshops.

Output

Partners

 

Lincoln community partner to be confirmed