The Adult Social Care Workforce Research Partnership, funded by the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) programme, aims to explore and address the critical challenges facing the adult social care workforce. This five-year initiative (2025-2030) brings together a team of leading researchers, social care organisations, and local authorities to improve workforce sustainability and wellbeing.

Our Themes

1. Labour supply, demand and markets

Social care is labour intensive, and it’s vital to create an efficient response to growing demand by matching labour with the appropriate skills to the right groups. Our work will focus on discovering and expanding ways of recruitment and retention of workers with the right skill-mix, including looking at the training needed to combat the increasingly complex care needs.

Our first study under this theme is: attracting, recruiting and retaining a younger social care workforce (OSCAR study).

2. Workforce wellbeing

Staff wellbeing directly affects the quality of care. However, many factors can negatively affect staff wellbeing, including high workloads, poor working conditions, harassment, limited career progression, lack of support, and the low perceived status of the care sector. Social inequalities also disproportionately affect the workforce. Finding ways to improve and sustain the wellbeing of the workforce is a priority of this partnership.

Our first study under this theme is: behind the decision to leave - understanding why people stop working in adult social care and social work (Leavers Study).

3. Innovation in work organisation, conditions and role design

Improving care quality, access, and efficiency requires innovation - especially in how work is structured and supported. Workforce challenges are a major threat to the sustainability of care. With this theme, the Care Work partnership explores and evaluates innovative ways to improve working conditions, redefine roles, and organise care work, helping scale solutions that support long-term change.

4. Data and technology

Technology is often seen as key to meeting rising care demands with limited staff. Existing research shows a complex picture on the benefits and impacts of innovations in data and technology, and highlights the barriers and levers to adoption of technology and digital in social care. We aim to learn from previous innovation implementation efforts and use strong evidence and research to guide effective, practical approaches to digital innovation in social care.