Get support for your research

We want to support the rich culture of social care research in Wales.

We support researchers in a variety of ways, from research design and support with funding applications, to helping share their research findings.

We also support social care practitioners to do their own research and apply knowledge to practice.

Support with research design

We can help you design a research study that meets the needs of the sector. This means providing advice and guidance and sharing our sector experience through participating in advisory or steering groups.

In partnership with our colleagues in Developing Evidence Enriched Practice (DEEP), we can also explore the design of your study through relationship style approaches such as Most Significant Change (MSC) and Appreciative Enquiry.

Support for research funding bids

We can support you to develop funding bids by offering practical and visible endorsement at key stages of the application process.

We can provide letters of support as to why a proposed topic or research question matters for social care in Wales, as well as confirming our involvement in specific project activities.

Connecting practitioners and academics

We connect researchers, practitioners, local authorities and other organisations that are interested in social care research.

We promote approved research through our communities of practice and other channels, as well supporting the recruitment of research participants.

The Evidence Community brings together practitioners, researchers and people with lived experience. By joining the community you can:

discuss and share research with others who want evidence to be central to social care delivery and decision making
connect with other community members to co-produce research proposals
attend and deliver workshops and events, like research conversations, communities of enquiry and our reflecting on evidence sessions.

Making sure research has an impact

One way of making sure that people working in social care know about your research is to contribute a blog. Whether you’re just beginning a new social care research project, or you have findings that can inform practice, we’d love to hear more about your work.

To make sure that people across Wales are aware of relevant research, we can also share information about the projects we support on our Project finder.

Our Research Support and Engagement Framework sets out the formal support we can offer to researchers and the criteria we use to decide what we support.

Key contacts

Dr Eleanor Johnson

Head of Research

I manage our research team.

We encourage and promote good quality research on social care in and about Wales by setting research priorities, supporting researchers, and managing research projects.

We pull together findings from research to provide insights for people working in social care through our evidence summaries and workforce insight briefings.

Before working at Social Care Wales, I was a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol’s Centre for Research in Health and Social Care. My research focused on paid care work, housing with care, and social care volunteers. I also taught research methods and sociology. Most recently, I carried out an NIHR, School for Social Care Research funded project on 'Covid, Closeness and Care'. This involved exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on relationships and interactions between care workers and people accessing care. My PhD research – carried out at Cardiff University (2018) – compared the experiences of care workers and the provision of care in a high-cost and a low-cost residential care home for older people.

Dr Kate Howson

Research Partnerships Manager

As the lead for research partnerships, my main aim is to seek out, build and maintain relationships and activities that support the use of research in practice and policy in social care. I work closely with researchers, research organisations and practitioners across Wales to help support the implementation of recent research.

I help ensure practice can be enriched by research and evidence, and that research is responsive to the needs of those using social care. I identify areas for collaboration between organisations, to deliver research skills-building opportunities for practitioners to be able to carry out their own research in practice.