Engaging with care home managers

The challenges of engaging care homes in health and social care research is well reported (Bower et al., 2009; Patel et al., 2003). Managers and owners have competing pressures on their time (e.g. providing high quality and compassionate care, recruiting and retaining staff, complying with the requirements of the regulator, commissioners and their own auditing systems, liaising with family members and supporting informal carers). It is understandable that under these conditions, research is not always a priority. Mechanisms are being set up in the UK to help care homes become ‘research ready’ and guidelines for best practice are becoming available to facilitate engagement as much as possible (ENRICH website/reports). However, recruitment remains a significant challenge for many studies (Bower et al., 2009).

Since 2015, the Measuring Outcomes in Care Homes Study (MOOCH) has successfully recruited 34 care homes (including nursing homes) and 293 residents, including those lacking the capacity to consent. The project faced numerous challenges early on, including local authority partners withdrawing from the research due to restructuring within their organisation. This paper shares our learning, reflecting on which strategies worked and which did not (and why), including; research ready homes, partnership working, payment to care homes, presenting at provider events, having support from CQC and local commissioning teams and providing care homes with feedback reports. We will also present the results from our care home manager debrief interviews, where managers were asked their motivations for taking part in the study and their experiences of being research participants.