Exploring transitions from children’s to adult social care

Exploring transitions from children's to adult social care

We’re starting work on a new priority-setting exercise that responds to a need for more research into transitions from children’s to adult social care. 

We’ll be listening to a wide range of people accessing and delivering care and support, as well as researchers and policy makers, who’ll tell us what they most want to know and understand. 

We worked in association with the James Lind Alliance (JLA) on two previous priority-setting exercises. We’ve used these to inform and adapt our approach to social care research and priority setting.

Why this topic is important

When a young person turns 18 years old and is accessing care and support, they may move from children’s to adult social care. 

Sometimes the support available to them as children ends, or it’s much more difficult for them to access that support as an adult. 

Transitions can be very challenging and it’s a time of uncertainty and change for young people. 

It’s important that we understand the different challenges. We can then find ways to help young people move forward positively through carefully managing the process and having the right support in place.

Who is helping us with this work?

We’ll be talking to lots of stakeholders as part of the research priority-setting exercise. This will include children, young people and their families and carers, practitioners from adult and children’s social care as well as colleagues in health, third sector and academia.

They'll tell us what matters to them and we’ll use this information to pull together the 10 priority questions for research on this topic.

What do we do with our research priorities?

One of the ways we use our research priorities is to identify topics for our evidence summaries. Evidence summaries give an overview of the research that’s already been done in an area.

How can you get involved?

We’ll be launching a survey shortly to gather views and experiences around transitions from children’s to adults’ social care.

For more information on this, and other priority-setting work contact: emma.taylor-collins@socialcare.wales.