Innovations in Health and Social Care.

Innovations in Health and Social Care

Public sectors organizations such as social services and NHS trusts are driven by internal and external forces such as the government, innovations in the private sector of new or more efficient health and social care products, and are required to demonstrate their performance against set criteria.  Mulgan and Albury (2003) suggest “Innovation should be a core activity of the public sector: it helps public services to improve performance and increase public value; responds to expectations of citizens and adapt to the needs of users; increase service efficiency and minimize costs…How to seek out and foster innovation from all levels is crucial to continual development and improvement:”

In this sense public services have to be innovative to keep up with public perception of quality and delivery of services and to meet the ever-changing performance criteria (for example, Best Value).

Innovations are not just top down approaches. A number of innovations are generated from grass-roots; the front line workers who may see issues arising and consider how they can change systems to make them more efficient or productive or more comfortable for service users.

This course aims to introduce the student to the importance of innovations in Health and Social Work from the perspective of Service Users and Carers. It will also address Policy and Practice innovations and how best to evaluate them.