The new Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain fit for the future identified "Ageing Society" as one of 4 Grand Challenges, each representing a focal point for investment to secure the prosperity of British industry by addressing real-world problems. In line with the preference of older people and their carers to age in place, and current policy guidance, the proposed research will involve collaboration with industry partners to help them address challenges in the implementation and uptake of new technologies to support sustainable arrangements for ageing in place capable of delivering wellbeing outcomes for older people. The Fellowship aligns with 4 "Pillars" of the Industrial Strategy: Pillar 1 - Investing in Science, Research and Innovation. The Fellow's innovative research focuses on innovations to address the Ageing Society Grand Challenge and aims to strengthen the role of UK expertise (in services, universities, innovation) in the global market for digital care products in ICTs, 'new generation' telecare products, and robotics. Pillar 3 - Upgrading Infrastructure. The digitisation of care has reconfigured approaches to care interactions, but current care UK infrastructure requires upgrading to take full advantage of innovations in this area. Pillar 5 - Improving Procurement. At present, procurement of care technologies relies heavily on local authorities and NHS Trusts. The research will explore how the rapidly emerging private care consumer market is influencing supply chains and its potential to drive innovation. Pillar 8 - Cultivating World-Leading Sectors. The UK's past role in developing new care technologies positions its innovators and universities to benefit from, and play a lead role in, the increasingly competitive global market for care technologies and services. The Fellow will examine challenges, benefits and possibilities for businesses and organisations designing and producing new technologies to support ageing in place. He will work closely with industry and non-academic partners to help them identify their needs and future potential, collaborating with six organisations which have already been recruited to the study and with others to be identified during the lifetime of the Fellowship. The research will focus on case examples of promising innovations. These will include companies developing various potentially transformative solutions, including assistive robotic systems capable of enhancing quality of life as people age; emotionally engaging and useful robot solutions for use in the homes of older people; and other technologies offering different kinds of modern care solutions attractive or useful to older people requiring care and those who provide their support (carers and care workers). The specific focus of each case will be selected in consultation with partners and through stakeholder interviews/desk research. Bespoke research techniques will be chosen, for their applicability to each case example and suitability to address research questions agreed with partners. A key issue will be to examine how suppliers of innovative products and services identify business development opportunities and access care markets. The research will include expert interviews, focused observations (in visits to the premises of partners) and analysis of documents. Methods will be qualitative (e.g. in-depth interviews, focus groups) and quantitative (e.g. surveys/analyses of company data), as applicable; the Fellow will identify/engage other stakeholders to take part if appropriate. The findings will show how innovators, manufacturers and suppliers view/approach challenges in the technology-enabled care market. The Fellow will work with them to discover and implement new approaches to marketing and developing sustainable products for successful ageing in place, making information available to future start-ups entering the care technology marketplace in a new industry-focused toolkit.

Growing numbers of people across the world live with impairments. Medical and technological advances mean that babies and children with impairments are more likely to survive into adulthood, adults are more likely to survive accidents and diseases that would previously have killed them, and more people are living to old age, but often with long-term conditions and impairments. At the same time, financial constraints on governments mean that emphasis is being put on family members and friends ('carers') to provide the support that disabled and older people need to help them live independently. The UK has carried out a range of surveys of impairment, disability and carers since the mid-1980s that have helped policy makers understand how many people need and provide support and these have provided organisations with 'ammunition' to help them campaign for change. The information from the latest in these series of surveys - the Life Opportunities Survey (LOS) and the Survey of Carers in Households (SCH) - has recently become available and offers an important opportunity to explore new and emerging patterns of impairment, disability and caring. The LOS is exciting because it is the first survey to explore how the environment in which people live (housing, transport, other people's attitudes and so on) influences whether or not their impairments become disabilities. In doing this, it has responded to the criticisms of earlier surveys that disabled people and their organisations made. These criticisms pointed out that it is often the environment that people live in and the support services they have access to that turn an impairment into a disability. The LOS also collects information about everyone in a household, so we can also explore whether disabled people and other people in their household experience similar barriers to participation in society. The survey covers both children and young people (from the age of 11) and adults of all ages. The Survey of Carers in Households is important because it seems to show that the population of carers has changed since the mid-1980s, with more people providing care when they themselves are well into older age. Our work will: - explore how patterns of impairment, disability and caring have changed over time; - look at how disabled people and those who live with them experience barriers to participating in society; - explore whether disabled people who live in more deprived areas or in the countryside experience different sorts and sizes of barriers to other disabled people. We will do this by using data from the two surveys and carrying out different statistical tests that will allow us to tease out all the different factors that might affect the experience of being disabled or being a carer. As we do the project, we will be using senior researchers who have experience of this sort of work to train and 'bring on' the next generation of researchers. We will have three partners in our project - SCOPE, an organisation of and for disabled people; Carers UK, an organisation of and for carers; and the Department of Work and Pensions, the English government department with lead responsibility for policy about older and disabled people. These partners will choose detailed questions that we will explore in our work. They will also help us to bring the findings from our work to other organisations and groups who will find them helpful. At the end of the project, we will write reports of the different parts of the work, and will also write a four page summary, in everyday language, so that we can share our findings with as wide a range of disabled people, carers and the wider public as possible. We will write articles for professionals who work with disabled people and carers, as well as for other researchers. Finally, we will run a workshop where we can share our findings face-to-face with others who can use them in their work and campaigning.

IMPACT stands for 'Improving Adult Care Together'. It is a new £15 million UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care, co-funded by the ESRC and the Health Foundation. It is led by Professor Jon Glasby at the University of Birmingham, with a Leadership Team of 12 other academics, people drawing on care and support, and policy and practice partners - along with a broader consortium of key stakeholders from across the sector and across the four nations of the UK. IMPACT is an 'implementation centre' not a research centre, drawing on evidence gained from different types of research, the lived experience of people drawing on care and support and their carers, and the practice knowledge of social care staff. It will work across the UK to make sure that it is embedded in, and sensitive to, the very different policy contexts in each of the four nations, as well as being able to share learning across the UK as a whole. As it gets up and running, IMPACT will seek to: Provide practical support to implement evidence in the realities of everyday life and front-line services Overcome the practical and cultural barriers to using evidence in such a pressured, diverse and fragmented sector Bring key stakeholders together to share learning and co-design our work in inclusive and diverse 'IMPACT Assemblies' (based in all four nations of the UK to reflect different policy and practice contexts) Work over three phases of development ('co-design', 'establishment' and 'delivery') to build a centre that creates sustainable change and becomes a more permanent feature of adult social care landscape

Our programme focuses on the care needs of adults living at home with chronic health problems or disabilities, and seeks sustainable solutions to the UK's contemporary 'crisis of care'. It is distinctive in investigating sustainability and wellbeing in care holistically across care systems, work and relationships; addresses disconnection between theorisations of care in different disciplines; and locates all its research in the context of international scholarship, actively engaging with policy partners. It will fill knowledge gaps, contribute new theoretical ideas and data analyses, and provide useful, accurate evidence to inform care planning, provision and experience. It develops and critically engages with policy and theoretical debates about: care infrastructure (systems, networks, partnerships, standards); divisions of caring labour/the political economy of care (inequalities, exploitation); care ethics, rights, recognition and values (frameworks, standards, entitlements, wellbeing outcomes); care technologies and human-technological interactions; and care relations in emotional, familial, community and intergenerational context. Our team comprises 20 scholars in 7 universities, linked to an international network spanning 15 countries. Our programme comprises integrative activities, in which the whole team works together to develop a new conceptual framework on sustainable care and wellbeing, and two Work Strands, each with 4 linked projects, on 'Care Systems' & 'Care Work & Relationships'. 'Care Systems' will: (i) study prospects, developments and differentiation in the four care systems operating in England, N. Ireland, Scotland & Wales, comparing their approaches to markets, privatisation and reliance on unpaid care; (ii) model costs and contributions in care, covering those of carers and employers as well as public spending on care; (iii) assess the potential of emerging technologies to enhance care system sustainability; and (iv) analyse, in a dynamic policy context, migrant care workers' role in the sustainability of homecare. 'Care Work & Relationships' will: (i) develop case studies of emerging homecare models, and assess their implications for sustainable wellbeing; (ii) focus on carers who combine employment with unpaid care, filling gaps in knowledge about the effectiveness of workplace support and what care leave and workplace standard schemes can contribute to sustainable care arrangements; (iii) explore how care technologies can be integrated to support working carers, ensuring wellbeing outcomes across caring networks; and (iv) investigate care 'in' and 'out of' place, as systems adapt or come under pressure associated with population diversity and mobility. Each project will collaborate with our international partners. These scholars, in 26 collaborating institutions, will ensure we learn from others about ways of understanding, measuring or interpreting developments in how care is organised and experienced, and keep up to date with latest research and scholarship. Our capacity-building strategy will build future scholarly expertise in the study of sustainability and wellbeing in care, and ensure our concepts, methods, and research findings achieve international standards of excellence. Universities in our partnership are contributing 5 UK & 12 overseas PhD studentships, enabling us to form an international early career scholar network on sustainable care, supported by our senior team and partners. Our impact strategy, led by Carers UK, involves leading UK and international policy partners. Informing policy, practice and debate, we will co-produce analyses and guidance, enhance data quality, promote good practice and engage decision-makers, policymakers, practitioners in the public, private and voluntary sectors, carers, people with care needs, and the media. Our Advisory Board of leading academics, policy/practice figures and opinion formers will guide all our work.

Focusing on the UK's growing but highly fragmented home care (HC) market, this fellowship aims to strengthen and enhance HC businesses' offer of sustainable quality HC services, by addressing skill levels in lagging areas and encourage growth across the UK care economy and understanding current business models. Advancing business innovation and skills development in the HC sector has the potential to contribute to Pillars 1 (Investing in Science, research and innovation), 2 (Developing Skill), 4 (Supporting Businesses to Start up and Grow) and 9 (Driving Growth across the Whole Country) of the Industrial Strategy. Pillar 1: There is an opportunity to increase competitiveness in the home care sector by understanding the current business models and developing more sustainable ones that will attract investment and commercialisation. The effective adoption of new business models is just as important as new technologies to improve competitive advantage in the sector. Pillar 2: Health and social care employers report a comparatively large skills gap in their workforce (19%, compared with 15% in all sectors). Skills in communication, mathematics and technology have become essential for the HC worker's role, yet these are lagging in many areas of the UK. This research aims to help businesses assess and understand the skills needed in their workforce and raise the skills level of social care staff. Pillar 4: The ability of businesses to innovate and grow depends on creating the conditions for companies to invest for the long term and developing the management skills needed to capitalise on these opportunities. This research aims to build understanding of what motivates, assists and hinders HC businesses to start up, establish and grow and help businesses identify and address their need for management and other skills, e.g. in assessing technology needs; working with care partners; advertising, marketing and costing their HC offer to people needing care and their families; building teams, managing quality, and organising their workforce. Pillar 9: By studying businesses operating in different places (e.g. urban/rural; affluent/deprived), this research will build knowledge on the flexibilities and variations HC sector businesses need to recruit staff and build their customer base throughout, or in target regions of, the UK. By working with organisations operating UK-wide, it will examine how they manage and adapt their approach for different localities, e.g. in regions facing lower levels of inward investment, with low productivity, or lagging skill levels. Implementing the innovation-oriented research and engaging industrial partners. The research will include several short periods placements with different home care provider businesses, to build trust and a holistic understanding of its vision, strategy and operational constraints. Working with HC industry bodies and with specific partner companies (selected for their potential to yield insight into their business model and offer to customers, and to how this has been configured and experienced as part of their growth or expansion strategy), the fellowship aims to: (a) analyse the challenges these businesses face in developing, extending and sustaining their business models and configuring the provision and delivery of quality care services; (b) assess how they change in response to forces and conditions affecting the HC market; (c) examine how they evaluate and address workforce and management skills needs; (d) produce a robust understanding of the business environments in which quality-orientated innovative HC businesses are operating, set out in concise reports accessible to key industry stakeholders; (e) examine different industry perspectives on the business benefits of innovating in the wider care economy, with the aim of building a 'business case' for extending innovation to long-standing, as well as start-up, HC companies.