How does the UK government address elderly care with innovation?

Social innovation is now widely recognized and has the power to improve people’s lives, the cornerstone of which lies in innovation. As we discussed earlier, social innovation can tackle the aging challenges, and also technology/innovation can improve elderly lives, which echoes the UK government’s findings from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) that innovation is key to delivering “outstanding quality” in adult social care in England. This includes technological innovation, innovation in policy, service delivery & commissioning.

In response, governments in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have set out plans to develop more innovative adult social care movements, including:

1. Midlothian care coordination team, this team focuses on staff training and development, as well as introducing ‘distributed leadership’ that encourages staff to take responsibility and to adjust their practices.
2. DACHA study, this study aims to develop a consistent approach to the way care homes produce and manage their data.
3. Social Care Digital Innovation Programme, this is a funding program that plays an important role in increasing innovation.
4. The Social Care Innovation Network, this network brought together people from providers, local authorities, and others for a series of discussions and events, to identify challenges to innovation in adult social care and create resources to allow innovators to overcome them.
5. Digitalization and digital technologies. It promotes digital innovations in adult social care to support health and wellbeing. By 2025, DHSC has proposed at least £150 million for digitalization and innovation.
6. Regulation in the adult social care sector. It aims to develop a more proportionate regulatory approach to support the evaluation & innovation, and also to encourage research.

Based on the evidence of impact (improvement of quality of life; carer satisfaction; less need for health or social care support; cost reduction and etc), the UK government is integrating innovation and lessons from the pandemic into their social policy, hoping to address more challenges and achieve a greater outcome. That makes them the first country and pioneer to realize the importance of innovation and leverage its power to improve people’s lives.

The full note is available at POSTnote 670 Innovation in adult social care (nuffieldfoundation.org)

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Originally published at http://soinnoinsight.wordpress.com on August 5, 2022.