Research: Delegated healthcare in Greater Manchester

• October 2024-September 2026

Our research seeks to develop the understanding of delegated healthcare in Greater Manchester, where the roles of community nurses from the NHS and adult social care workers from private sector care providers are blended.

We will ask those involved how these blended roles:

• affect the experience of people receiving care
• affect working conditions for care workers
• impact the quality of adult social care

The population of England is getting older, and more people need social care, including support with personal care, either in their own homes or in care homes. Social care workers provide this support.

People may also need healthcare which is delivered by community nurses. This can lead to problems, including too many visits from health and social care staff or missed visits. There is also a shortage of social care workers, which puts pressure on health and social care systems.

There’s a need to rethink the roles of the people providing these services. One option is delegated healthcare - also known as blended roles - where social care workers take on some of the community nurses’ tasks. While this is happening in practice, there is not enough evidence on how well it works and what it achieves.

This research will provide an evidence base, potentially improving care workers working lives and the quality of care experienced by the people they care for.

How are we doing it?

To improve the evidence, our research will:

• Look at existing information and research to see what’s already known.
• Talk to health and social care workers, people receiving care and their families, and other people involved in blended roles to understand their experiences.
• Develop a framework to measure how well-blended roles are working and recommend what information needs to be collected. This will help us create a way to evaluate how effective blended roles are.
• Use the information we gather to create a toolkit that will guide the implementation of blended roles in a way that works well for people who use services.