Developing scaled tools for residential and nursing home inspection: feasibility study

Regulation of long-term care for older persons: a scoping review of empirical research

OBJECTIVE

Not only care professionals are responsible for the quality of care but other stakeholders including regulators also play a role. Over the last decades, countries have increasingly invested in regulation of Long-Term Care (LTC) for older persons, raising the question of how regulation should be put into practice to guarantee or improve the quality of care. This scoping review aims to summarize the evidence on regulatory practices in LTC for older persons. It identifies empirical studies, documents the aims and findings, and describes research gaps to foster this field.

DESIGN

A literature search (in PubMed, Embase, Cinahl, APA PsycInfo and Scopus) was performed from inception up to December 12th, 2022. Thirty-one studies were included.

RESULTS

All included studies were from high-income countries, in particular Australia, the US and Northwestern Europe, and almost all focused on care provided in LTC facilities. The studies focused on different aspects of regulatory practice, including care users' experiences in collecting intelligence, impact of standards, regulatory systems and strategies, inspection activities and policies, perception and style of inspectors, perception and attitudes of inspectees and validity and reliability of inspection outcomes.

CONCLUSION

With increasingly fragmented and networked care providers, and an increasing call for person-centred care, more flexible forms of regulatory practice in LTC are needed, organized closer to daily practice, bottom-up. We hope that this scoping review will raise awareness of the importance of regulatory practice and foster research in this field, to improve the quality of LTC for older persons, and optimize their functional ability and well-being.

Natural language processing to identify case factors in child protection court proceedings

Social work case files hold rich detail about the lives and needs of vulnerable groups. Traditional case-reading studies to gain generalisable knowledge are resource-intensive, however, and sample sizes thereby limited. The advent of ‘big data’ technology, and vast repositories of centrally stored electronic records offer social work researchers novel alternatives, including data linkage and predictive risk modelling using administrative data. Free-text documents, however – including assessments, reports, and case chronologies – remain a largely untapped resource. This paper describes how 5000 social work court statements held by the Child and Family Court Advisory Support Service in England (Cafcass) were analysed using natural language processing (NLP) based on simple rules and mathematical principles. Thirteen factors relating to harm and risk to children involved in care proceedings in England were identified by automated computer techniques, and almost 90% agreement with professional readers achieved when the factors were clear-cut. The study represents an innovative approach for social work research on complex social problems. In conclusion, the paper discusses learning points; practical implications; future research avenues; and the technical and ethical challenges of NLP.