News updates

Cordis Briefing: January 2020

January 2020

Extracts from the Cordis Briefing held on 23 January 2020. Topics covered included:

• Trends in the use of short and long term episodes of care (SALT data)
  
• Patterns of council tax receipts and business rate retention – what does this mean for social care expenditure? 
• A review of the adult social care outcome framework (ASCOF) survey results.
• CQC’s State of Care 2019: focus on mental health.
• The new geography of ICS and what this means for commissioning relationships

Disrupting Exploitation Programme

January 2020

Cordis Bright has been commissioned by The Children’s Society to conduct an evaluation of the Disrupting Exploitation programme. This evaluation is being delivered across the three year length of the programme. This report presents findings from Year 1.

The Disrupting Exploitation programme will run for three years from 2018 to 2021, and is intended to focus on disrupting the exploitation of children and young people across three cities in the UK (London, Birmingham, and Greater Manchester) as well as nationally through systems change interventions including outreach and policy and strategy change, and one-to-one case work.

Further information is available here. 

Merry Christmas!

December 2019

Merry Christmas from the Cordis Bright team! 

Our office is closed between Christmas and New Year. We re-open on 2 January 2020. 

Cordis Pulse: December 2019

December 2019

In November, we were interested to read the LGA and SCIE publication on Achieving Integrated Care: 15 best practice actions. We have a track-record of, and are currently, working in and conducting evaluations of a range of integrated health and social care programmes and initiatives across England and Wales. These actions identified by SCIE and the LGA grouped under the headings of: realising person-centred coordinated care, building place-based care and support systems, and leading for integration chimed with many of our experiences of conducting nationally important, high profile evaluation work in this area.

Download the Pulse in full below. 

Cordis Briefing: November 2019

November 2019

Extracts from the Cordis Briefing held on 19th November 2019.  Topics covered included:

• Election preview / Brexit review: analysis of the state of play and likely impact on our sector.
• Analysis of the Autumn Spending Review and updates on other relevant spending news.
• Analysis of Short and Long Term Care data – exploring four years-worth of trends in care activities.
• STPs becoming ICSs – review of progress and emerging issues.
• Social Care Service User Survey: what does it tell us about deferred payments data?
• Apprenticeships and the apprenticeship levy.

Cordis Pulse: November 2019

November 2019

Welcome to November’s edition of the CordisPulse - a monthly digest of key research and policy developments across the sectors in which Cordis Bright provides research and consultancy services, i.e. children and young people's services, criminal justice, and adult social care and health.

SEN stress-test 2019

October 2019

This document presents an analysis of SEN trends nationally and how these trends vary between local areas.

It has a particular focus on:

• Numbers and rates of children with SEN
• Types of need
• Profile of provision used to respond to these needs
• Spending on Independent and Non-Maintained Special Schools (i.e. specialist provision that is used when children’s needs cannot be met locally)

The latter half of the our analysis – the SEN stress-test – recognises that local authorities are experiencing different pressures. We use 7 indicators to identify those who we think are experiencing the most pressures and stresses in relation to SEN provision.

Cordis Pulse: October 2019

October 2019

Rough sleeping is a primary focus of a number of this month’s resources. For example, Public Health England’s Health Matters explores the scale, causes and consequences of rough sleeping. It cites 2018 Rough Sleeping Statistics from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), indicating that official estimates via street counts of the number of people rough sleeping on a single night in England fell by 2% between 2017 and 2018. MHCLG’s impact evaluation of the Rough Sleeping Initiative (RSI) 2018 suggests that this reduction might be connected to RSI funding; an analysis comparing changes in street count numbers in the 83 areas which received RSI funding to 83 areas which did not suggests the RSI led to a significant reduction in the overall number of people sleeping rough between 2017 and 2018.

A process evaluation of the RSI is due to be published in the coming months and we await its findings with interest. This will help to shed light on how the RSI has achieved or contributed to reductions in rough sleeping in areas which received funding. It also has the potential to identify learning for policies, strategies and programmes aiming to reduce rough sleeping or improve outcomes for people who experience it.

We would expect findings from the RSI process evaluation to resonate with existing research on support for people who are homeless and/or experiencing multiple disadvantage, including findings from our independent evaluations of Making Every Adult Matter and Blackpool Fulfilling Lives. For instance, existing research highlights the importance of accessible, flexible, integrated and person-centred support based on trusting relationships in engaging and supporting individuals. Crucially, the evidence to-date suggests that for reduced rough sleeping and improved outcomes to be sustained, individuals need support on a medium to long-term basis. This improved support to individuals must also be accompanied by system-level changes in areas such as strategic planning, commissioning, support pathways and workforce development. Therefore, the RSI and similar initiatives are likely to contribute to sustained reductions in rough sleeping only if they are able to facilitate the development and implementation of sustainable interventions and systems change.

Interventions designed to reduce and manage demand

October 2019

We have recently completed a number of evaluations concerning interventions which aim to reduce or manage demand for mainstream services. These innovations are increasingly common as health and social care services look for ways to reduce the strain they are experiencing. Having delivered a number of evaluations now, we thought it would be interesting to look across a selection of them to see if we can spot any emerging themes. In particular, we wondered:

• Are there key factors which contribute to the success of these approaches?
• How useful is the policy of investing in interventions designed to reduce or manage demand for mainstream services?

Download our blog below to find out more.

MEAM Approach evaluation: year 2 report

October 2019

This is the year 2 report for the longitudinal evaluation of the MEAM Approach, which is a non-prescriptive framework to help local areas design and deliver better coordinated services for people facing multiple disadvantage. The MEAM Approach is currently being used by cross-sector partnerships of statutory and voluntary agencies in 27 local areas across England. Our evaluation takes a mixed methods approach, in which we are collaborating with an expert research group of eight people who have lived experience of multiple disadvantage. The report presents nine early findings on the impact of the MEAM Approach on individual wellbeing for clients, on the use of resources in local areas and on local services and systems.

The MEAM Approach has been developed by the Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) coalition, which is formed of the national charities Clinks, Homeless Link, Mind and associate member, Collective Voice.