IRISS announce details of older people project

The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) have published details of a new project focused on preventative care of older people.

‘Plan P: new approaches to prevention with older people’, will review existing evidence around preventative approaches with older adults and open debate around key issues such as what ‘prevention’ means in this context, what differentiates early intervention from prevention and which is appropriate and indeed possible, and the role of universal preventative measures.

It will simultaneously use service design methodology and best knowledge of policy/practice transfer to test out one or more preventative approaches on the ground with appropriate partners. Finally, it will attempt to engage a more general audience in conversation and contemplation of this issue.

Project outcomes

•     Greater understanding of what prevention means for the ageing population and the challenges and issues around this is achieved
•     Awareness of current preventative and early intervention strategies that have been used in this area and how successful they have been (or otherwise)
•     Key gaps in evidence and critical challenges/questions are surfaced and explored to enable key players to come together to be able to fill these
•     Practitioners have experience of implementing a preventative approach in practice
•     A greater understanding of policy/practice transfer in this context is achieved and these lessons can be shared and generalised to other types of interventions
•     Greater knowledge of the processes that support radical and incremental innovation is achieved and the contribution that each of these types of innovation can make to a relatively new field are understood
•     Innovative ideas are sourced through direct engagement with the public and this allows our thinking to be more fully informed by the views of people
•     We contribute to public debate and understanding of the issues around prevention which, if the evidence supports it as an effective policy, may help to embed it more deeply within policy and further practice.

For further information, please contact Emma Collins here: http://www.iriss.org.uk/our-team/emma-collins