The effectiveness of social work with adults. A systematic scoping review.

This report is based on a scoping review into the effectiveness of social work with adults undertaken to help inform the work of the Chief Social Worker for Adults. The Chief Social Worker for Adults is responsible for leading the reform of adult social work at government level in England. It is based on systematic searches of a number of electronic bibliographic databases, websites, and reference harvesting the bibliographies of key published studies in order to identify material that had not come up in the searches. ‘Effectiveness’ refers to how well a particular intervention, approach, or policy performs under ‘real world’ conditions. However, it is accepted that definitions of effectiveness depend upon what is being measured and who is doing the measuring. The review took a broad approaching to defining effectiveness, including cost effectiveness, impact on service users and carers (for example, changes to quality of life), and user and carer views. • Overall, the review concluded that, although the evidence base for social work with adults is mixed and uneven, the results are broadly positive. • Social workers’ effectiveness seems to rest most on their ability to combine a number of roles, including assessment, local knowledge, and being able to provide counselling and/or ongoing support. • The evidence base for studies about care management and health care social work appears to be largest. • There is considerable satisfaction with palliative care social workers among service users and carers but there is evidence of unmet demand. • We seem to know least about effectiveness of social work with adults with learning disabilities. • We need to know more about the inter relationships between structural arrangements, workload, worker satisfaction and effectiveness

Managing behavioural and psychological symptoms in community dwelling older people with dementia:1. A systematic review of the effectiveness of interventions

© 2018 The Author(s) This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: Two-thirds of people living with dementia live at home in the UK and many experience distressing behavioural and psychological symptoms. This systematic review evaluates the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions for behavioural and psychological symptoms among community-dwelling people living with dementia. Methods: This two-stage review undertook an initial mapping of the literature followed by a systematic review of relevant randomised controlled trials. We searched electronic databases for pertinent studies reporting outcomes from interventions from January 2000 to March 2015 and updated searches in October 2016. We included studies that considered behavioural and psychological symptom management for older people living with dementia who live at home and excluded studies conducted in long-term care settings. This paper presents findings from a narrative synthesis of 48 randomised controlled trials evaluating interventions for people living with dementia alone, family carers alone and patient-carer dyads. Results: We retrieved 17,871 de-duplicated records and screened them for potential inclusion. Evidence from 48 randomised controlled trials suggests that family carer training and educational programmes that target problem behaviours and potential triggers can improve outcomes. Nurses and occupational therapists appear to help people with dementia with behavioural and psychological symptoms, but professional comparisons are lacking and there is no shared language about or understanding of behavioural and psychological symptoms amongst professionals, or between professionals and family carers. Conclusions: Future research should focus on the effectiveness of components of multi-faceted programmes and their cost effectiveness and include qualitative data to better target interventions for behavioural and psychological symptoms. It is important to consider family carer readiness to use non-pharmacological strategies and to develop a shared language about the inherent needs and communications of behavioural and psychological symptoms.Peer reviewe

Social workers' workload survey: messages from the frontline: findings from the 2009 survey and interviews with senior managers

"The research findings which have been reported emerged from work commissioned to inform the Social Work Task Force but they also make a contribution to issues discussed in this section and to other social work debates. It is important to recognise that this was the most comprehensive diary exercise conducted with social workers in this country. The findings generated from the analysis of the diaries have provided the first systematic examination of how social workers use their time. Yet for the reasons examined in the report there are provisos regarding the representativeness of data which leads to the recommendation that the exercise should be repeated with an instrument which is redesigned to reflect lessons from this survey and with a larger negotiated sample, along the lines of the Teachers’ Workload Survey." - Page 138

Rethinking multiple exclusion homelessness: implications for workforce development and interprofessional practice: summary of findings

In February 2009, the Economic and Social Research Council launched the ‘Multiple Exclusion Homelessness Research Programme’ with the aim of informing government policy and practice and finding solutions to bring the most vulnerable ‘homeless people’ in from the margins of society. The concept of ‘multiple exclusion homelessness’ alerts us to the potential for complex interplay between many different professional or occupational groups, reflecting how drug or alcohol dependencies; severe mental health problems; domestic violence; local authority care and prison; and participation in ‘street culture’ and ‘survival activities’ such as sex work, begging, street drinking and street-level drug dealing frequently (but not always) intersect with homelessness (Fitzpatrick, Johnson and White, 2010). As part of the Programme, the ‘Social Care Workforce Research Unit’ at King’s College London was commissioned to undertake a two year exploratory study exploring how different agencies and professionals work together to support people with experience of multiple exclusion homelessness. The study commenced in July 2009 and is due for completion in June 2011. The objectives of the study were threefold. First, to conceptualise and describe the workforce as it relates to multiple exclusion homelessness. Second, to enhance understanding of how interprofessional collaboration works to identify and manage the intersections between homelessness and other facets of deep social exclusion. And thirdly, to make recommendations as regards for whom and when, and in what respects, interprofessional collaboration might work best to prevent multiple exclusion homelessness