Building Capacity Award: 'We're not the Enemy'. Exploring the relationships between social care practitioners, service users, community care lawyers and the law

Introduction

The aim of this Fellowship was to identify the potentially fruitful areas for interdisciplinary research between social care and legal practitioners.

The objectives were to carry out a scoping exercise and literature review, to find out:

1. What kind of legal knowledge and expertise is useful for social care practitioners and in social work training?
2. How can social care and legal practitioners work together more productively?
3. What views do social care clients have about their legal rights?
4. How has the Care Act influenced the legal requirements of social care practitioners and the rights of their clients?

The overall aim in terms of research capacity development was to prepare the groundwork for a research proposal, developing individual skills and profile in the field.