Innovation or doing things differently is often seen as a solution to the problems facing adult social care today and for the foreseeable future. Adult social care might seem to be an area where new approaches will naturally flourish (e.g. competition between providers, different people paying, choice over types of care and provider). Yet, while there are many innovations and good evidence that some benefit people using care services, they do not spread rapidly and are often do not become mainstream. Many get abandoned, despite seeming promising. There may be several reasons for this but we are not sure what really stops good things being taken up. Compared to other parts of society, we don't know lots about innovation in social care and why things do not spread. Many organisations and people offer to help with innovation but we do not know much about what they do and how they do it, or what works. Overall, there has not been much effort to draw together experiences of innovating or changing things in adult social care to let people know what might help and avoid 'reinventing the wheel'. This is the reason for our proposed research. We want to support the adult social care sector to start up, implement, spread and scale-up affordable innovations that work well. We will produce: 1) new evidence about the process of innovating (doing things differently), what influences the process (what helps and what hinders), what helps people and systems change, what support is available to help people, and the sector's experiences of and views about that support; 2) a theoretical framework (the 'big idea') for understanding social care innovation that will help to design, plan and learn about innovations; 3) an evidence-based discussion about innovation overall in the care sector and its prospects; 4) descriptions of types of social care innovations, including the people and organisations involved, and types of support for innovation. If our research is to support social care to do things differently and better, then our findings need to be translated into actions. We will build and foster strong relationships with stakeholders (e.g. users/carers, care providers, local authorities) and work with them to design and choose the focus of the study and develop recommendations. Doing this, we will swap ideas and share learning, which should encourage use of the research. We will also ask people who have helped us with the research to tell us what they learnt, if/how they have used the findings, and what we could do better. Innovation is a dynamic or changing process, involving many organisations and people. It needs to be understood in its particular context (e.g. support at home or a carers' group). So, we will develop illustrations or case studies of innovations around selected topics (e.g. integrating systems, making the most of human resources (people), promoting choice and control) to explore the process in-depth. We will explore how individuals, organisations and the wider context all influence innovation. We will focus on parts of adult social care where there is potential for a lot of learning (e.g. research evidence and capacity, stakeholder networks and knowledge leaders, organisational characteristics, 'misaligned' or 'perverse' incentives around costs and benefits). To develop more general claims about what influences innovation and what are the necessary conditions for it to flourish, we will study different types of innovations and conduct a national survey to test findings from the case studies. Informed and supported by strong and diverse user and carer involvement, our study should a) inform decision-making about how to foster the right conditions and policies for innovation to flourish in adult social care; b) inform the design and planning of innovations, work out what innovations are more likely to succeed, and gain learning from innovations; and c) provide evidence-based recommendations for policy, practice and research.

Recovery is "the process of rebuilding, restoring and rehabilitating the community following an emergency" (HMG Emergency Response and Recovery, 2013). For COVID-19, recovery will involve all-of society (because everyone in the country has been affected to some extent) and whole-system (because every organisation, service and function has been affected). Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic we have deployed our research expertise in emergency response and recovery to support government. This has involved providing ongoing information about recovery, producing rapid response guides on aspects of response and recovery, and identifying opportunities for research to support the recovery effort. This project builds on this initial work to understand how government develop plans for short-term, transactional 'recovery' and how they think strategically about longer-term, ambitious, transformational change which we call 'renewal'. Objective: This project works closely with resilience partners in three Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) to develop a generalizable, theoretically underpinned framework for how recovery and renewal to COVID-19 can enhance resilience. The framework will: - Take a whole system approach to recovery and renewal (from communities to national levels) - Explore how to manage the changes in people, places and processes that is needed to live with COVID-19 - Address short-term, transactional recovery as well as longer-term, transformational renewal - Complement existing guidance and resilience standards and inform an international standard that we will write on recovery and renewal Approach: The framework will be informed by (and inform) Recovery Coordination Groups (RCGs) by using an action research approach to work closely with the resilience partners and engage with local and national organisations on how they plan recovery and renewal on a system-wide basis. Our partner LRFs have different structures (e.g. for local governance and recovery governance) and characteristics (e.g. partnerships, priorities, populations, local challenges, inequalities) so we can create a framework that is widely applicable to local variations. Activities: We will: - Collect and analyse national/international lessons on recovery and renewal - Gather primary data by interviewing experts across the world on emergency planning, risk, and resilience - Contribute to three Recovery Coordination Groups (RCGs) as well as three specific renewal projects (e.g. on volunteering, community resilience, demand management in emergency services) - Extensively engage with other local and national government organisations to ensure alignment of our framework and exploit ongoing opportunities for impact - Facilitate webinars and training on recovery and renewal for resilience - Develop and test a framework for recovery and renewal, refine it in different contexts (national and international), learn about its application, and use feedback to improve it - Develop and test a methodology to assess the impact of the framework Main deliverables: - A searchable database of lessons for recovery and renewal for local resilience - Expert briefings on how to implement recovery and renewal for resilience - A generalizable, theoretically underpinned, practice-tested framework to support government's thinking about recovery and renewal for resilience - A self-evaluation methodology to reflect on recovery practices - Publish fortnightly 'The Manchester Briefing on Recovery and Renewal' currently distributed directly (and through a network of national/international partners) to 52,000 people along with case studies and training products - International and national standards having a global impact

As part of the government's response to COVID-19, 15,000 rough sleepers have now been offered self-contained temporary accommodation in England, mainly in hotels. This approach, which has involved the decanting of hostels, shelters and similar shared provision for rough sleepers, is a short-term response. When the lockdown ends, decisions will need to be taken about how to house former rough sleepers in line with the UK government's commitment to prevent people from going back to the streets - including, potentially, through the re-opening of shelter-type accommodation. Existing temporary accommodation with shared facilities might make it impossible for people to comply with government social distancing advice. So these decisions will impact on the risk of a second wave of infection from COVID-19 and possibly any mutations. This proposal outlines a unique time limited opportunity to conduct the first ever randomised controlled trial in the UK, to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of permanent housing on the risk of COVID-19 infection and housing stability for people experiencing homelessness. That many homeless people are currently waiting to be housed means they can be randomly allocated to different housing solutions at scale quickly. The insights drawn from the short-term impacts of permanent housing can be used to inform other local authorities' responses to the challenges of COVID-19 and the cost-effectiveness of accommodation alternatives more broadly.

In recognition of the growing availability of data in key areas of policy, the PEC will introduce set piece UK-wide 'State of the Nation' reporting in each of four high-level priority thematic areas led by the four organisations that will make up the research consortium: 1. R&D, Innovation and Clusters (Sussex University); 2. Creative Education, Skills, Talent (Work Advance); 3. Internationalisation (Newcastle University), and 4. the Arts, Cultural & Heritage sectors (University of Sheffield) respectively. These reports will be specified in consultation with industry and policymakers, launched at regular biannual frequencies drawing on the RSA's events capacity and scheduled well in advance to facilitate planned engagement activities. We envisage the reports to include systematic tabular and chart-based sections on official and other publicly available economic and relevant social indicators as well as deep dives on issues of topical interest where more analysis is needed. The four thematic priority areas for regular reporting are partly informed by the need to avoid duplication of work covered within existing UK centres of excellence, such as the CREATe research centre at Glasgow University which specialises in intellectual property, regulation and competition issues, and areas like public sector broadcasting (PSB) where regular reporting is already available, such as through the media and communications reports from Ofcom. However, the PEC will still conduct primary research in such areas where important gaps in the evidence base are identified. As well as drawing on official and open data sources, the State of the Nation reports will extract insights from a new flagship longitudinal business panel that the PEC proposes to develop. This will involve collecting survey data from a panel of UK-based creative industries firms and firms in selected comparator sectors. In addition to the analytical deep dives in the State of the Nation reports, we intend that the PEC will make important original research contributions to the evidence base including from a large, multi-disciplinary network of PEC Research Fellows recruited from UK and overseas academic and private sector institutions. Fellows will be encouraged to bid for targeted calls for (co-)commissioned research. As well as being made aware of PEC research calls, the benefits of being a PEC Research Fellow will include: professional recognition and visibility; access to other PEC Research Fellows; the chance to shape the PEC's thematic priorities; opportunities to participate in policymaker engagement activities; opportunities to peer review PEC work, and invitations to present at PEC seminars and conferences. We will also fund a limited number of time-limited 'Small Networks' grants, focused on bringing together a group of PEC Research Fellows to interrogate a particular policy-relevant research area, promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing. The PEC's website will also serve as a platform for excellent policy-relevant research undertaken outside of the PEC. This will take the form of blogs, podcasts and Discussion Papers. We will also use our virtual and in-person events to bring to policymakers' attention important contributions from the wider academic literature in the UK and beyond. What differentiates the Creative Industries PEC from other policy-focused research centres is our embedded approach to knowledge exchange. That is, we embed PEC researchers and our Policy Unit personnel as much as possible in the policy planning, design and delivery processes of our key stakeholders. This embeddedness will continue to be a defining feature of our work: it will unlock the opportunity to help more researchers become more policy-literate, and to support policymakers to become more adept at using data and research evidence.

The 'MARCH' Network proposes that Assets for Resilient Communities lie at the heart of Mental Health (M-ARC-H) and is dedicated to advancing research into the impact of these assets in enhancing public mental health and wellbeing, preventing mental illness and supporting those living with mental health conditions. Specifically, it will advance our understanding of the impact of social, cultural and community assets including the arts, culture, heritage, libraries, parks, community gardens, allotments, leisure centres, volunteer associations, social clubs and community groups, of which there are an anticipated 1 million in the UK. The network will bring together a Disciplinary Expert Group of researchers with a Policy Group of major national policy bodies, a Patient Public Involvement Group of national mental health charities, and a Community Engagement Group of national organisations. Across three years, our network will unite research with policy and practice to tackle critical questions of research priorities, methods, and implementation in this field; understand and resolve barriers to mobilising community assets; and provide training and support to the next generation of researchers. Specifically, our network will address questions organised in two core work streams (WS): WS1. Cross-disciplinary research and challenges: (a) What evidence is there, from a cross-disciplinary perspective, for how and why community assets impact on public health and wellbeing and the lives of those living with mental health problems, and where are the gaps for future research? (b) How can we use a cross-disciplinary approach to provide meaningful data to different stakeholders and users? WS2. Equity of engagement and access innovation: (a) Who amongst the UK population, demographically and geographically, currently engages with these programmes and how does participation vary dependent on mental health? (b) What are the current barriers and enablers to engagement at an individual, organisational and policy level and how can we develop innovative approaches to enhance engagement, especially amongst the vulnerable? This research work will be complemented by a rich portfolio of impact, engagement and training activities (see 'Impact Summary'). This network aligns with strategic priorities of the AHRC and ESRC as well as having a secondary relevance to the priorities of the MRC (through its consideration of the role of community assets and social prescribing to support medical approaches to mental health), NERC (through its exploration of the impact of green spaces) and EPSRC (through its focus on the opportunities provided by technology for driving research forwards). It has also been designed in response to the Network Plus Research Agenda. In addition to the objectives already discussed in the prior Je-S section, it is responsive to many of the mental health challenges cited in the agenda. For example, the call specification noted that only 25% of people with mental health problems receive ongoing treatment. Whilst there are recognised economic and resource constraints with delivering sufficient mental health services, this Network proposes to focus on the role that existing community assets could play in providing support to a much wider range of people in the UK including those on waiting lists. As another example, the call specification raised that 70% of children and adolescents with mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at an earlier age. This Network will involve working with policy makers and community organisations to see how research could help overcome barriers to access with the aim of engaging more young people and those who are hard to reach. Overall, the network will seek to understand and support future research into how community assets could be mobilised to encourage more resilient individuals and communities with a greater understanding of and capacity for self-management of mental health.