• The House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee has published an Area of Research Interest: ‘Unpaid carers’ to help support their scrutiny of adult social care services in England.
  • The ARI comes with several specific areas of interest aiming to further break down the broad area. These include what data is available to understand the challenges faced by unpaid carers, what additional data is needed and how could this be obtained, what are the contributions made by unpaid carers to the adult social care system, how does the state benefit from the work carried out by unpaid carers, and the role of unpaid carers in co-producing care.
  • Academics at all career stages, research institutions, and experts are encouraged to share their research and insights, highlight any evidence gaps and how these could be addressed, and suggest scrutiny themes and questions the Committee should be asking the Government.
  • Those who respond to the ARI survey will be entered onto a database of experts who may be contacted by parliamentary staff in order to help them scrutinise the Government in this area of interest. There is no need to contact Committee staff directly, as they have access to all information you enter on the database.

Registration for this ARI has now closed.

House of Lords Adult Social Care Committee Area of Research Interest 2022

Unpaid carers

Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • What data is available to understand the current challenges faced by unpaid carers?
  • What additional data is needed to understand the current challenges faced by unpaid carers, and how could this be obtained?
  • What are the contributions made by unpaid carers to the adult social care system?
  • How does the state benefit from the work carried out by unpaid carers and is there an economic case to be made for better support for unpaid carers?
  • What is the role of unpaid carers in successfully co-producing care? What outcomes can be achieved by successful co-production?
  • How can the success of co-produced care be measured and evaluated in objective terms?
  • What examples are there of best practice, both nationally and internationally, when it comes to supporting and engaging with unpaid carers? To what extent can these approaches be replicated in England?

Adult Social Care Committee

Lords Select Committee

The Adult Social Care Committee is appointed to consider the planning for, and delivery of, adult social care services in England.

Find out more about this committee.

What are Areas of Research Interest?

Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) are lists of policy issues or questions. They are a way for an organisation to express interest in seeing more research evidence in certain topics.

How can researchers share their insights on the ARIs?

If you have evidence or insights on the ARIs (including evidence reviews): you can add information about the research and your contact details to the repository of research relevant to the ARIs. If this area becomes a topic of scrutiny within Parliament, parliamentary staff may search the repository for relevant research and contacts.

How does Parliament use ARIs?

An inquiry into the effectiveness and influence of the Select Committee system by the 2017–19 House of Commons Liaison Committee made several recommendations on how to improve the use of research evidence in select committees. One recommendation was for committees to develop and publish Areas of Research Interest (ARIs). The House of Commons Scrutiny Unit, with the support of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), is trialling select committee ARIs as a pilot exercise to better understand and assess how they can support parliamentary scrutiny.

ARIs are not an exhaustive list of all areas in which Parliament may be interested in research evidence in the future. Parliamentary priorities are driven by elected representatives responding to current affairs. In particular, select committees issue calls for evidence based on their current priorities; ARIs do not replace these calls for evidence. However, ARIs may be used by parliamentarians and by parliamentary staff in POST, the Libraries and select committee teams to scope and/or inform future work.

House of Commons Scrutiny Unit

The Scrutiny Unit forms part of the Select Committee Team in the House of Commons and exists to strengthen the scrutiny function of the House.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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