ARC WM is leading the Public Involvement in the ARC National Priority on Social Care and Social Work. The first, important stage was to understand the landscape for public involvement in Adult Social Care and Social Work. We completed a scoping exercise that would be used to inform future ways of working in partnership with people who access Adult Social Care Services.

We are now delighted to publish the report from the scoping exercise - available here.

The objectives from the scoping exercise are set out below:

• To understand current involvement, activity, and networks of those with lived experience of adult social care in the ARCs.
• To understand the scale and scope of the existing national social care research networks and within national programmes such as the School for Social Care Research.
• To gain the views of stakeholders within the ARCs and existing national networks regarding how best the Public & Community Involvement, Engagement & Participation (PCIEP) can add value in social care research.
• To understand the accessibility and diversity issues regarding user engagement/ co-production in social care research.

ARC WM will now take forward the recommendations of the report on behalf of the national consortium – we do hope that you will be interested in engaging with us again as developments progress.

For more information, please contact Prof. Robin Miller: r.s.miller@bham.ac.uk