Social Care for Older People in Wales PSP Question Verification Form

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Published: 19 January 2021

Version: 1

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The purpose of this Question Verification Form is to enable Priority Setting Partnerships (PSPs) to describe clearly how they checked that their questions were unanswered, before starting the interim prioritisation stage of the process.

The JLA requires PSPs to be transparent and accountable in defining their own scope and evidence checking process. This will enable researchers and other stakeholders to understand how individual PSPs decided that their questions were unanswered, and any limitations of their evidence checking.

Name of the PSP

Social Care for Older People in Wales

Please describe the scope of the PSP

The scope of the Project is defined as looking at:

  • Evidence needs to help provide sustainable care and support services for older people in Wales that enable health and wellbeing
  • where these social care and support services are
    • received by people aged 65 or over
    • delivered by Local Authorities, community initiatives, the third sector, private enterprises or family and other unpaid carers;
    • received in any care and support setting (at home, in the community, in residential care homes, nursing homes or supported living).
  • and where evidence needs include (but are not limited to) those that relate to:
    • the impact and value of health and social care interventions for health and wellbeing;
    • the sustainability of those services, including considerations of efficiency, effectiveness; cost-containment; and flexibility to adapt to peaks in demand
    • interventions that enable / promote independence
    • interventions that prevent an escalation of need for more intensive social care and health services;
    • whole system” aspects of social care such as the balance between public, community and private provision and integration of health and social care services;
    • how provision could, should or might need to change in future, including considerations of the impact of COVID-19 on health and care needs.

The Project will exclude from its scope questions about care and support that

  • relates to younger age groups (<65 years)
  • do not relate back to enabling health and well-being or the prevention agenda, or “supporting older people to live happier and more fulfilling lives”

Please provide a brief overview of your approach to checking whether the questions were unanswered

The Working Group, which included topic experts, reviewed the longlist of questions and agreed, based on their expert knowledge of research on social care for older people, that none of the questions had been answered to the level of a systematic review. Some may have been partially answered. The Working Group also wanted to be open to responding to the priorities with any form of research, perhaps including a systematic review of the evidence that is available. This prioritisation project has been a pilot that aimed to speed up the JLA process. It was therefore agreed that all of the questions would go forward to the workshop and that the verification process would be carried out afterwards.

Please list the type(s) of evidence you used to verify your questions as unanswered

The verification process has looked for systematic reviews relating to the topics in the long list of 35 questions. The findings have confirmed the views of the Working Group members that none have been answered to this standard of evidence.

(After the first survey a long list of 42 questions were identified. These were merged after the interim prioritisation survey where there was overlap in the questions, to a final list of 35).

Please list the sources that you searched in order to identify that evidence

Cochrane Library

SCIE – social care online https://www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/

NICE guidelines: Older people with social care needs and multiple long-term conditions (2015); Dementia (2018); Supporting Carers (2020); People’s experience in adult social care services (2018); Older people: independence and mental wellbeing (2015)

Campbell Library

What search terms did you use?

Social Care
Older People
Carer
Elderly
Social care workforce / paid carer
Complex needs
Integrated care
Prevention
Loneliness/ isolation
Funding
Person-centred
Involvement
Consistent/cy
Covid

Please describe the parameters of the search (eg time limits, excluded sources, country/language) and the rationale for any limitations

Research from all of the UK as learning may be relevant to Wales – excluded research outside of the UK
Time limit of five years

Names of individuals who undertook the evidence checking

Kristina Staley, Information Specialist

On what date was the question verification process completed?

21 Oct 2020

Any other relevant information

None