What's coming up? Find out more about what the REAL Centre has planned for the coming months, including funding opportunities, new analysis and projects.

Research network funding call

We have £14m of funding for 2021-2027 to establish a network of academic partners to develop broad, potentially multi-disciplinary, research programmes across the areas of demand for and supply of health and social care. We will be inviting applications to be part of the network in 2021. 

In-house analysis

Our next major milestone is our annual workforce report, which this year will focus on pressure points in the supply of nurses. We will explore the relevance of the UK government’s target of recruiting 50,000 additional nurses in the NHS by 2025, including the challenges that the UK faces in recruiting nurses domestically and from other countries. We will also examine the wider policy context and highlight key longer term numbers and trends.

Modelling

The REAL Centre is expanding its social care capability and work programme in the coming year. This includes commissioning a quantitative model on the future size and shape of the adult social care workforce in England. This work will give the REAL Centre capacity to project future workforce needs under different scenarios for demand and alternative models of care. The aim is for the model to allow the REAL Centre to model the implications of different policy changes, for example increasing social care workforce pay. This work will also allow the REAL Centre to identify key gaps in the adult social care workforce evidence base to inform the research we commission in the future. We will be inviting applications to develop this model in early 2021.

We also have two modelling projects up and running: