Advancing business innovation and skills development in the home care sector

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.

Who will benefit from this research?
Leaders in new and innovating home care businesses and infrastructure organisations will be the most direct beneficiaries from this project. Some of these businesses have already been identified and agreed to fully cooperate with resources in advance, as specified in the attached letters of support and pathways to impact statement. Other potential beneficiaries will be identified in a consultation with a major home care association that holds the membership of several independent home care businesses. This research also has the potential to impact a much wider range of other beneficiaries such as policy advisors, home care services and care providers. It is also potentially of interest to policy makers working on issues of home care as innovative and emerging business models will have a direct economic and political impact in the wider economy.

How will they benefit from this research?
There is the potential for a direct economic impact for the direct beneficiaries of this project. An in-depth understanding of the value proposition of their current business models and potential to create a new typology for emergent models. There is a strong potential for social impact. The wider public, and in particular those providing and using care services, will be able to learn from structured and informed reports from the projects findings.
From the project's outset, communication will be set up via discussions through a dedicated twitter account where discussions with interested partners and the wider public can engage through digital activities. Digital activities are not only of ever-increasing importance to society at large but have proved particularly important within home and social care communities where access and mobility issues mean the internet is an ideal vehicle for communication.
Contributions to highly respected journals through articles and publications in sector-specific magazines and online press will be used to disseminate findings. A research network will be convened through series of engagement and action-plan workshops where industrial partners and academics can collaborate and engage in discussions around the challenges facing the home care sector, particularly on how emerging business models will impact economic outputs and affect the delivery and of wellbeing to home care users.

How will relationships with industrial partners be developed and sustained
One of the ways of in-depth engagement with industrial partners is to problematize their challenges, one of them being how they view innovation in the sector and how this inform and impacts their business models. By understating their frustrations and challenges, it will become easier to engage with partners and keep them interested in updates and project developments. Segregating industrial partners into different tiers would also be a good way to organise communication with various partners. The following is proposed:
Tier 1 partners - these are the most engaged partners, which will become part of the main primary data collection. These partners will become part of a forum that will meet regularly for project updates and to guide next stages. Impact and stakeholder workshops will bring these partners to regular engagement with the project throughout its lifecycle.
Tier 2 partners - these partners will receive regular updates and invites to key workshops and briefings.
Tier 3 partners - these partners form the wider audience that will benefit from projects outputs but do not necessarily require constant engagement or perhaps will be part of specific project outcomes. These can include policy makers or home care users. These partners would receive occasional updates and newsletters, and would be better suited on social media discussions through the twitter page.