Florence Conway, Researcher at think tank Reform, considers whether the slow adoption of technology in social care due to funding constraints and bureaucracy—or an unwillingness to challenge outdated models of care?
Technology has enormous potential to transform how social care is delivered. It can enable people to live safely and independently in their homes and stay connected to families and friends while also freeing up capacity in the wider health system – improving the recruitment, retention and morale of staff.
Yet, despite these clear benefits, adoption of new technology remains sluggish. Patients lose out from an outdated model of delivery, and we lack clarity around what’s needed to really shift the dial.
At Reform Think Tank, we recently undertook research into the adoption of technology in social care, speaking to a range of experts and practitioners, to identify what is preventing the sector from adopting readily accessible and beneficial technologies.
The result was a multifaceted combination of different obstacles. We identified three key barriers: awareness of technologies, local government funding and procurement, and workforce capabilities and culture.
Of course, funding has a significant part to play. The care sector has, rightly, been calling for services to be properly resourced for decades. Analysis from the Health Foundation finds that an additional £6.1 billion to £14.4 billion will be needed to meet demand by 2030/31. The system as a whole is drastically underfunded and continues to be so. This means it is a system with no capacity or slack for experimentation or adoption of new approaches.
What’s more, the funds on offer for specific technological and innovation adoption are particularly small. Take the Social Care Digital Innovation Programme and the Adult Social Care Technology Fund, for example, which between them offer only £4 million for local authorities to help with technological adoption. Given the above context, this is unlikely to make much difference.
And interviewees also told Reform that even when money does come about, it is often not used for long-term investment, such as implementing new technologies, and instead is used to address immediate more immediate problems – “firefighting”.
Aside from funding, there is also a question of culture: whether a stretched workforce, working to achieve a number of urgent goals, is willing to prioritise tech adoption, even where it will help in the long-run. What complicates the problem even further is that digital literacy is not high enough to support pro-tech ways of working. An NHSX review found that “Access to and use of technology was lower among care workers than other groups in the workforce”. Illustrating the extent of the skills deficit, one care manager quoted said: “We’ve got some staff that… don’t even know how to use Google Maps.”
One interviewee told Reform there is a technological “fear factor” present in the adult social care workforce. This “fear factor” is also compounded by the (in)ability of leadership to even think about adopting new technologies. Similar to the problems of monetary resources, interviewees told us that they are often too busy “firefighting” immediate problems and so are unable take a more strategic, long-term view of the opportunities in technology and social care. Without leadership able to drive change and empower staff to use technologies, the adoption process will inevitably be a slow crawl.
Since the Government has commissioned Baroness Casey to conduct an independent review into social care – before committing to a new strategy – we could be waiting years for an answer on funding. Clearly, action is needed much sooner than this, not just to support adoption of new technology, but to keep the system afloat and provide adequate care to those who need it.
In the meantime, it is up to innovative trend-setters to drive forward the adoption of technology. Even small changes in behaviour, culture and resource allocation could make a huge and low-cost difference to care outcomes. In a system that is inhospitable to new approaches, the most important changes could begin with just one individual.
