This project provides a valuable and timely opportunity to bring together diverse stakeholders to consider the question: how do we promote collaboration rather than competition between informal and formal carers despite enduring structural limitations? One key contributing factor to current challenges in the care sector is Brexit, which has resulted in a shortage of formal carers in the UK. Brexit has also limited opportunities for knowledge exchange with EU partners. Yet, stakeholders in Scotland and Europe share concerns about greater responsibility being placed on informal carers and associated human rights implications.

The project will combine diverse social science disciplines with mental health and economic perspectives, as the complex social problems entailed must be considered alongside questions of economy. The programme team also comprises partners representing different forms of state provision, to help consider diverse possibilities for sustainable care. The project will explore this topic using innovative yet practical methods, tried and tested with practitioners and the people they support through the Developing Evidence Enriched Practice (DEEP) programme in Wales and Scotland. DEEP is a co-productive approach to gathering, exploring and using diverse types of evidence (i.e. research evidence, lived experience, practitioner knowledge and organisational/policy knowledge) in learning and development using story and dialogue methods.

The programme has been designed with impact and sustainability in mind and will bring added benefits of engagement with an International Carer Conference in Edinburgh in October 2023. This will also be part of a study visit funded by Eurocarers, bringing diverse EU participants, further extending impact.