In this blog, Nick Andrews introduces the Collaboration for Care project and describes how it used the Developing Evidence Enriched Practice (DEEP) approach.
Collaboration for Care
This was a knowledge exchange project, which ran between October 2023 and April 2024. The project shares new learning about how to improve relationships between paid and unpaid carers and create better outcomes for the people they support.
The final project report was published in September 2024.
Background to the project
The project was developed by people working to improve support for unpaid and paid carers in Scotland, Wales and the EU (via Eurocarers). Their aim was to promote collaboration in practice and policy.
The project was led by the University of Strathclyde and the University of Dundee. It was supported by the DEEP programme in Wales, and the team worked with diverse European partners.
The project provided an opportunity to consider this question:
How do we promote collaboration between informal (unpaid) and formal (paid) carers despite enduring structural limitations?
- CollaborationforCare
By structural limitations we mean that rigid systems are not well equipped to respond to the current challenges. These include things like increased demand on care and support services, retention and recruitment of staff, growing poverty and inequality, and climate change.
How the project was carried out
A key DEEP principle is to value diverse types of evidence, so the project included evidence from research, people with lived experience, practitioners and policy makers. Each of the four workshops held during the project explored these in turn.
The DEEP approach supports co-production and dialogue offering a range of tools and methods to help people talk well together. In this project, we used a storytelling method, sharing Magic and Tragic Moments from the various participants, which were then explored using Community of Enquiry and Exploratory Talk.
The findings
One of the key project findings was how experiences, opportunities and obstacles were similar across the countries represented.
Participants identified three broad themes:
- valuing care and making it visible
- relationship based practice (including care and support planning)
- relationship based policy making and implementation.
Valuing care and making it visible
Participants viewed caring as a distinctly human activity. One that can be complemented, but not replaced, by machines. They thought caring (unpaid and paid) was undervalued and needed to be recognised and promoted. Embracing an Ethics of Care approach would raise the status of caring as a highly skilled, kind, imaginative and perceptive activity (Gilligan, 1982).*
Ethics of Care is a theory that highlights the importance of relationships and the moral significance of caring and being cared for. This means the focus is placed on empathy, compassion, and personal context rather than on abstract principles or standardised ways of working.
Participants challenged the historical view of care as something that was purely task-based. Often classed as ‘woman’s work’, easy to take for granted, and therefore of lesser value. They agreed that this failed to recognise the importance of supporting unpaid carers and wider families. Participants also reminded us that some paid carers, who come from marginalised groups, also face challenges like discrimination, low pay and poor working conditions.
Reference* -
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* Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women's development. Harvard University Press.
Relationship based practice and support planning
There was agreement across participant groups that care and support has to be relational and responsive because each caring context is unique and complex. This means working in a way that’s based on meaningful and rewarding relationships, rather than rigid guidelines or task-based care. When paid and unpaid carers work together in a flexible way, this benefits them and the people they support.
Relationship based policy making
Participants identified the need to raise the profile and status of care and to create the right conditions for relational and responsive ways of working to flourish. Both of these things were established as a priority for commissioners and policy makers.
Good practice examples were shared from Wales, including from Gwynedd County Council and Vale of Glamorgan Council. Local authority commissioners and policy makers in these two areas have been working co-productively with homecare providers, unpaid carers, and people who use care and support services. This has helped to develop more personal, outcomes focused practice. They found that stories rather than numbers are a more effective tool for evaluation in relationship-based policy making.
