CRCC Member Awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for studying social care in the UK

Dr. Anthony Kevins, a CRCC member and Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University, has been awarded a prestigious British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant to study social care preferences in the UK. Dr. Naomi Lightman, Associate Professor of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, is the co-investigator on the project. 

Ageing populations, limited infrastructure and staffing shortages, and reduced government funding have all contributed to the long-running crisis in social care in the UK. Further complicating matters, the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting fiscal challenges have increased public attention to social care while simultaneously decreasing government capacity to finance social programmes. As a result, existing trade-offs in long-term care policy are likely to become even more complex and contentious.

From December 2023, this two-year project (SRG23\231164) will investigate social care preferences under conditions of scarcity, looking at how citizens balance trade-offs across different policy dimensions (e.g., resource distribution, taxation, service provision). It will do so using original survey experiments that will be co-designed with third-sector organisations and local authority contacts in Britain.

The project thus tackles a question that has become central to UK public policy: how can governments manage the trade-off between the critical need for high-quality, equitable long-term social care provision and the high financial costs of these measures to citizens?

Anthony Kevins is a Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University’s School of Social Sciences and Humanities. His research centres on the linkages between public opinion, policy-making processes, and government legislation, and has been published in journals such as Political Behavior, Political Psychology, and Socio-Economic Review

Naomi Lightman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research interests include care work, gender, immigration, social inequality, and research methodology. Her work has been published in journals including International Migration Review, International Labour Review, and the Journal of European Social Policy.