Professor Ann-Marie Towers
About
I am a Professor of Social Care Research, the regional Social Care Theme Lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration in Kent, Surrey and Sussex (ARCKSS), and a Senior Fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research.
I joined CHSS in 2019 and lead a team of social care researchers. I am a mixed-methods researcher, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. I have a special interest in how we might employ qualitative methods, such as observations, supported interviewing techniques and forms of adapted communication, to try and ascertain the views and experiences of care home residents and people with cognitive and communication difficulties. I also work with the social care sector, building research capacity and looking at ways to improve recruitment and retention in the workforce, with a special interest in work-related quality of life. Internationally, I am interested in how we can work with care providers to integrate quality of life outcomes into routine care planning conversations, supported by the inclusion of quality of life measures in Digital Social Care Records.
I provide advice and expertise to policy makers (e.g. UK Parliament POST note on innovation in adult social care and House of Lords Select Committee on the Invisibility of Adult Social Care). Funding panel membership includes regional and national committees, including the NIHR Three Schools Dementia Programme, the School for Social Care Research, Research for Patient Benefit and Research for Social Care. I provide expert reviews for several funders and health and social care journals, Chair or contribute to study steering committees/advisory groups and sit on the editorial board for the Journal of Primary Health Care Research and Development.
I have received funding from the Big Lottery fund, The Health Foundation and the Norwegian Research Council, as well as several NIHR programmes, including: the Policy Research Programme (PRP), the School for Social Care Research (SSCR), Health and Social Care Delivery Research (HSDR) and Research for Social Care (RfSC).
Currently researching
ASCOT programme of work
I lead a programme of work to develop and test the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT), an outcomes measure used internationally in research and evaluation to inform long-term care policy and practice. In England, ASCOT is used by health and social care policy makers to populate core outcome indicators in the Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework. ASCOT is used internationally in research, policy and practice, having been officially translated into 8 languages and used in Europe, Australia, Japan and China.
Recent ASCOT innovation work has been focused on working with care providers in Australia, England and Sweden to adapt the measure for use in care planning. This co-productive work with the sector is complemented by several ongoing research grants. This first is qualitative work funded by Research for Social Care, which aims to support older adults and those living with dementia to self-report (therefore reducing the reliance on proxies and addressing concerns around representativeness in the national Adult Social Care Surveys in England). The second is the final work package of the national, mixed-methods DACHA study (see below).
The DACHA Study
The DACHA Study is led by Professor Claire Goodman at the University of Hertfordshire and aims to develop and pilot a minimum dataset in care homes in England. I co-lead the final work package with Prof Adam Gordon (University of Nottingham). A key component of DACHA is the inclusion of quality of life measures in care homes’ digital care records. This highly impactful study is directly informing work led by NHS England to create Digital Social Care Record minimum datasets, and work led by the DHSC to develop a Minimum Operational Dataset for care providers in England.
Adult Social Care Workforce Survey
I am the academic lead on a new project led by IPSOS MORI, in collaboration with Skills for Care to develop a survey of the adult social care workforce for the Department of Health and Social Care. This rapid, responsive research will contribute to a better understanding of how factors such as working conditions, organisational characteristics and workplace culture affect work-related quality of life, providing policy makers with valuable insights regarding the links between these factors and workforce retention. As part of this work, the University of Kent will develop and psychometrically assess a new measure of ‘work-related quality of life’ for the social care workforce, which will be a key addition to the ASCOT suite of tools, complementing the measures for people using social care and their informal carers.
Building Research Capacity in Adult Social Care: the Kent Research Partnership
Building research capacity in the social care sector is a policy priority and a key part of raising the esteem and professionalisation of the workforce. I lead one of six capacity building social care partnerships in England (the Kent Research Partnership), involving collaborative working with Kent County Council, practitioners, providers and people with lived experience to identify strategic research priorities and develop proposals from the grass-roots.
ARCKSS Social Care Programme
ARC KSS carries out applied research and implementation support on social care in the Kent Surrey and Sussex region. ARC KSS is also lead for social care in the national priorities programme in adult social care and social work which brings together a number of ARCs to give a national perspective on this priority area.
Other ongoing social care projects
I am currently a co-applicant and project team member on the following studies led by colleagues at Kent:
• Better Care Moves study – led by Dr Wenjing Zhang
• Assessing the Economic Case for Domiciliary Care – led by Dr Florin Vadean and Professor Julien Forder.
Research interests
Social care, Older adults, Care homes, Social care workforce, Capacity building, Research into practice, Quality of life/wellbeing, Outcome measurement
Professional
Memberships:
British Society of Gerontology
British Geriatrics Society
Awards:
University of Kent Advanced Research prize (2022)
NIHR School for Social Care Research: Developing Research Leaders award
Specialties
Applied health research, health and social care evaluation, vulnerable groups, complex health needs, long term care of older people, integrated care, mixed methodology, qualitative research, children’s hospices, European research, health visiting