Jill Manthorpe

King's College London | KCL · Social Care Workforce Research Unit

Background Acute hospital wards can be difficult places for many people living with dementia. Promoting comfort and wellbeing can be challenging in this environment. There is little evidence‐based support for professionals working on acute care wards on how to respond to distress and maximise comfort and wellbeing among patients living with dementi...

Social workers were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined the well-being, burnout and work conditions of UK children’s social workers at five time points of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a cross-sectional mixed methods study analysing data from 1,621 social workers who worked in children’s services in the UK in 202...

Background There is a high prevalence of health problems among single people who are homeless. Specialist primary health care services for this population have been developed in several locations across England; however, there have been very few evaluations of these services. Objectives This study evaluated the work of different models of primary...

Background The numbers of older people experiencing both homelessness and memory problems are growing, yet their complex health, housing and care needs remain undelineated and unmet. There is a critical gap in understanding what can improve the care, support and experiences of this group. In this qualitative study we explore how stakeholders unders...

The closure of day centres during the COVID-19 pandemic placed these, generally under-researched, services of day centres under the spotlight. We report priority areas for support and research concerning English adult and older people’s day centres identified by a 2021 survey. Day centres and other day centre stakeholders have an appetite for evide...

Introduction: There has been global investment of new ways of working to support workforce pressures, including investment in clinical pharmacists working in primary care by the NHS in the England. Clinical pharmacists are well suited to support older adults who have multiple long-term conditions and are on multiple medications. It is important to...

Aim: to explore the psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life amongst United Kingdom (UK) health and social care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subject and methods: Health and social care professionals within nursing, midwifery, allied health professions, social care and social work occupations working in the UK during the pan...

Objective To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of specialist hospital discharge and intermediate care (support after discharge) services for people who are homeless in England. Methods We estimated the comparative cost and consequences of different types of specialist care provided by 17 homeless hospital discharge and intermediate care services. We...

Gambling harms are disproportionately experienced among disadvantaged groups and as such, adult social care (ASC) practitioners are well-placed to identify and support affected individuals. There exists no evidence-based ‘introductory’ question for practitioners to identify those at risk of gambling harms, which includes family and friends (‘affect...

Background Decisions about eating and drinking for people with severe dementia in acute hospitals are often difficult. Using a codesign process, we developed a decision guide for family carers and hospital professionals to help everyone making these decisions. Method We conducted a systematic review and qualitative interviews with people with mild...

In England, “easements,” introduced via the Coronavirus Act 2020, were brought in at the start of the pandemic to support English local authority adult social care services. They enabled local authorities to suspend some of their mandatory duties under the Care Act 2014. Easements were only adopted by eight local authorities and for short periods,...

The social work profession was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined the well-being, working conditions and intentions to leave the social work profession among a sample of UK older people’s social workers. This was a cross-sectional mixed methods study analysing data from 426 social workers who worked in older peopl...

Background: The need to improve support following a diagnosis of dementia is widely recognised, but it is unclear how this can best be achieved within UK health and social care systems. A task-shared and task-shifted approach has been recommended, but there is limited guidance on how to achieve this in practice. As part of a programme of research,...

Background Dementia leads to multiple issues including difficulty in communication and increased need for care and support. Discussions about the future often happen late or never, partly due to reluctance or fear. In a sample of people living with dementia and carers, we explored their views and perceptions of living with the condition and their f...

Objectives: Residential respite (RR) provides a valuable break for family carers, but little known about its offer, take-up or experiences of carers of people living with dementia. This paper aims to further understandings of factors influencing RR use. Design: RR stakeholder workshop and qualitative interviews. Setting: Stakeholder or living...

Background: Autism has long been viewed as a paediatric condition, meaning that many autistic adults missed out on a diagnosis as children when autism was little known. We estimated numbers of diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic people in England, and examined how diagnostic rates differed by socio-demographic factors. Methods: This population-ba...

For a small number of parents home education is a preferred alternative to school and in England more parents are taking up this option. This has refuelled a long-running debate about the adequacy of a regulatory framework under which parents are not required to register their children as home educated and provision is not routinely monitored. This...

This chapter is the first of three to explore in detail developments in multi-agency safeguarding work from the perspective of schools. It draws on interviews with over 200 staff in 58 schools based in five local authorities across England and one multi-academy trust to chart schools’ adaptation to the increased scope and volume of their safeguardi...

The final chapter reinforces the key role which schools play in child protection and safeguarding and reviews the research reported in the book in the context of the austerity measures in place at the time it was conducted. The most important factors influencing the effectiveness of the multi-agency arrangements at local government level in support...

This chapter is based on the views of 68 professionals working in children’s social care or education services in England and an additional 26 interviews with people working in regional and national agencies involved in different aspects of safeguarding and education policy. These interviews contributed to a much better understanding of how schools...

Schools play a vital role in identifying and responding to concerns relating to the protection and safeguarding of children and young people. Staff in schools are well placed to form relationships with children and young people and build up a picture of the risks individual children are exposed to either at home or in the wider community. However,...

This chapter considers the experiences of school staff in relation to information gathering and decision making regarding safeguarding, including making a referral to children’s social care services. It first considers how staff in schools collect and share information regarding children they are concerned about within school. Advice and support av...

Despite the fact that the concept of ‘multi-agency working’ has underpinned developments in this area for at least 60 years, there is scant evidence for its effectiveness and even less for what works in engaging agencies at an operational level. The chapter examines the structures, arrangements and policies that are in place at national and local l...

This chapter examines the historical context in which schools have supported the welfare of children over the past 150 years. It examines the historical context to explore both the ways in which schools have supported the welfare of children and the development of policies designed to protect children’s welfare – from the Children Act 1889 through...

This chapter discusses the experiences of schools in relation to children and families who do not meet the threshold for children’s social care services but who may need ‘early help’ or other forms of lower-level support. First, the reconfiguration of early help arrangements at the local level in the context of austerity is discussed. Second, the i...

Introduction: Using co-design processes, we aimed to develop an evidence-based decision guide for family carers and hospital professionals to support decision-making about eating and drinking for hospital patients with severe dementia. Methods: Following a systematic review, we interviewed people with mild dementia, family carers and hospital pr...

Introduction Most people living with dementia want to remain living in their own homes, and are supported to do so by family carers and homecare workers. There are concerns that homecare is often unable to meet the needs of this client group, with limited evidence regarding effective interventions to improve it for people living with dementia. We h...

People with care and support needs were often badly affected by Covid-19, although the impact on people employing Personal Assistants (PAs) has not been addressed. We aimed to explore the experiences of people employing PAs during the pandemic to inform care systems and social work practice. Remote qualitative interviews were conducted with seventy...

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, social work and social care practitioners had some the worst working conditions of any sector in the UK. During the pandemic, data revealed that social care occupations had higher COVID infection and mortality rates than the general population. The article reports the changing working conditions (measured via the Wor...

Social care Personal Assistants (PAs) are directly employed by individuals to assist with activities of daily living such as help or support with personal care, shopping, household tasks and community participation. This option is encouraged by UK public funding. In England, disabled people's support organisations initially offered assistance with...

This paper shared the compared results on the psychological wellbeing and work-related quality of life amongst health and social care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Health and social care professionals within nursing, midwifery, allied health professions, social care and social work occupations working in the United Kingdom (UK) du...

Maternity services cannot be postponed due to the nature of this service, however, the pandemic resulted in wide-ranging and significant changes to working practices and services. This paper aims to describe UK midwives’ experiences of working during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study forms part of a larger multiple phase research project using a cr...

There are long‐standing concerns that people experiencing homelessness may not recover well if left unsupported after a hospital stay. This study reports on a study investigating the cost‐effectiveness of three different ‘in patient care coordination and discharge planning’ configurations for adults experiencing homelessness who are discharged from...

This article reports social workers’ attitudes and approaches to working with people experiencing multiple exclusion homelessness (MEH) who self-neglect, and whether these people receive services, including safeguarding, differently from other populations. It draws on telephone interviews in 2020 with twenty-two social workers working with adults i...

Nurse, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), along with other health and social care colleagues are the backbone of healthcare services. They have played a key role in responding to the increased demands on healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper compares cross-sectional data on quality of working life, wellbeing, coping and...

The implementation in England of a Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SCWRES), initially confined to social work, started with a first set of eighteen volunteer local authorities (LAs) in 2021. This article discusses a rapid evaluation of the SCWRES during its first year. We used Normalization Process Theory (NPT) to better understand th...

This article reports findings from a study on the effect of the adjustments or ‘easements’ that were made to the 2014 Care Act when measures to manage the impact of COVID-19 were introduced in England in 2020. Only eight local authorities (LAs) implemented the changes permitted. The experiences of five are explored in this article. Data were collec...

Gambling‐related harms are increasingly recognised as public health concerns internationally. One response is to improve identification of and support for those affected by gambling‐related harms, including individuals who gamble and those close to them, ‘affected others’. Adult social care services have been identified as a setting in which screen...

Objective To explore the experiences and challenges of people with Parkinson’s and their family members living in the community through the lens of their transitions to better understand the phases and changes in their lives. Design Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and analysed using codebook thematic analysis. Setting/participa...

Summary Vulnerability is an underexamined concept in social work. Scholarly activity principally concentrates on policy analysis and theoretical debate; less attention is given to lived experience of vulnerability from the perspectives of particular groups, impoverishing understanding of the phenomenon. This article presents findings from the first...

Stress and mental health are among the biggest causes of sickness absence in the UK, with the Social Work and Social Care sectors having among the highest levels of stress and mental health sickness absence of all professions in the UK. Chronically poor working conditions are known to impact employees' psychological and physiological health. The sp...

Introduction: COVID-19 has disproportionately affected people living with dementia and their carers. Its effects on health and social care systems necessitated a rapid-response approach to care planning and decision-making in this population, with reflexivity and responsiveness to changing individual and system needs at its core. Considering this,...

Eating and drinking difficulties, such as loss of appetite and swallowing problems, are common in dementia, but little is known about the experiences of ethnic minority groups who are managing these difficulties at home. The purpose of our study was to explore the meaning of food, the impact of dementia on eating and drinking, and carers’ experienc...

Background Frailty is clinically associated with multiple adverse outcomes, including reduced quality of life and functioning, falls, hospitalisations, moves to long-term care and mortality. Health services commonly focus on the frailest, with highest levels of need. However, evidence suggests that frailty is likely to be more reversible in people...

Self‐neglect and hoarding are behaviours that are hard to define, measure and address. They are more prevalent among older people because of bio‐psycho‐social factors, which may be exacerbated by advancing age. This paper aims to further understandings of self‐neglect and hoarding in England's Care Act 2014 context, drawing on a study involving qua...

Objectives: The experience of providing/receiving intimate continence care between family members can be difficult and emotive. Often, for people living with dementia this seems an area of care overlooked by professionals. This study investigated the experiences of intimate continence care for people living with dementia and their family member (t...

Internationally there has been much interest in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the care and support of older people including those with needs arising from self-neglect and/or hoarding. During the pandemic English local authorities’ legal duties remained to respond to concerns about harm about people with care and support needs living in th...

Eating and drinking difficulties are common in dementia, but little is known about the experiences of ethnic minority groups managing these difficulties at home. We undertook qualitative semi-structured interviews, exploring the meaning of food, the impact of dementia on eating and drinking and carers’ experiences of support. Interviews were audio-...

Background As the organisation of health and social care in England moves rapidly towards greater integration, the resulting systems and teams will require distinctive leadership. However, little is known about how the effective leadership of these teams and systems can be supported and improved. In particular, there is relatively little understand...

An understanding of the psychosocial impact of deafblindness on older people is impoverished by a dearth of research in the field. Particularly limited are studies adopting a salutogenesis perspective, in which older deafblind people's coping capacities are explored. Much research focuses on vulnerability to unfavourable outcomes, which may perpetu...

Purpose The involvement of patients or members of the public within public health, health and social care and addictions services is growing in the UK and internationally but is less common in gambling support services. The purpose of this study was to explore Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) infrastructures and engagement channels used in heal...

Easements to the Care Act 2014 were introduced in England in Spring 2020 to support local authorities (LAs) who were dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on adult social care. They were adopted by a small number of LAs that only kept them in place for a very short period. This article draws on the limited literature covering easements and on a synth...

Introduction: People from ethnic minority backgrounds living with dementia are more likely to be diagnosed later and have less access to health and social care support than their White counterparts in the United Kingdom (UK). Covid-19 has exacerbated health inequalities and diminished trust from underserved communities in the government and health...

Most people living with dementia want to continue living in their own home for as long as possible and many rely on support from homecare services to do so. There are concerns that homecare often fails to meet the needs of clients with dementia, but there is limited evidence regarding effective interventions to improve its delivery for this client...

Many health and social care (HSC) professionals have faced overwhelming pressures throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As the current situation is constantly changing, and some restrictions across the UK countries such as social distancing and mask wearing in this period (May-July 2021) began to ease, it is important to examine how this workforce has...

Objectives – The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on many people living with dementia and carers. Caring for a person living with dementia at home with limited avenues for support and a break challenged many carers. Care homes in England closed to visitors, with very few offering opportunities for a short-stay. We investigated impact of Cov...

Background and objectives We engaged people living with dementia, family carers and health and social care professionals in co-designing two dementia care interventions: for family carers and people living with dementia (New Interventions for Independence in Dementia Study (NIDUS)-family and home-care workers (NIDUS-professional training programme)...

Background There has been a shift in focus of international dementia policies from improving diagnostic rates to enhancing the post-diagnostic support provided to people with dementia and their carers. There is, however, little agreement over what constitutes good post-diagnostic support. This study aimed to identify the components of post-diagnost...

Background Most people living with dementia want to remain living in their own homes and are supported to do so by family carers. No interventions have consistently demonstrated improvements to people with dementia’s life quality, functioning, or other indices of living as well as possible with dementia. We have co-produced, with health and social...

Purpose The aim of this ethnographic study was to investigate how homecare workers support or inhibit independence in people living with dementia. Methods We undertook 100 h of participant observations with homecare workers (n = 16) supporting people living with dementia (n = 17); and 82 qualitative interviews with people living with dementia (n =...

This is a two-page decision guide about nutrition and hydration for people with severe dementia during acute hospital admissions. The decision guide aims to help family carers and hospital professionals have conversations and make decisions. This guide was co-designed using the latest evidence, guidelines and interviews/workshops with people with m...

Background: Growing numbers of interventions are being developed to support families living with dementia, but the extent to which they address the issues of most importance to people living with dementia and their carers is unclear. The aim of this review is to synthesise the best available qualitative evidence on the outcomes valued by (a) peopl...

Introduction: Health and social care services in England are moving towards greater integration, yet little is known about how leadership of integrated care teams and systems can be supported and improved. This realist review explores what works about the leadership of integrated care teams and systems, for whom, in what circumstances and why. Me...