Managing change in health and social care

This PhD by Publication has investigated contemporary management of change practice in health and social care. Through eight case studies it explores change within different sectors, roles and organisations within national, regional and local systems. More successful change programmes are better able to understand their contexts, to design change theories that will work within these contexts, to fully implement the activities planned on the basis of these theories, and to have the resources and autonomy to complete the programme to its conclusion. Despite the relative success of some programmes, there are common opportunities for change management practice to be improved. These include -the meaningful engagement of service users throughout the process; setting of intermediary and final outcomes that provide opportunity for formative and summative evaluation, and in the use of relevant data to enable reflective change practice. It would also appear that despite the considerable body of knowledge regarding management of change this rarely explicitly influences change programmes and therefore stronger collaboration between academia and practice is still required. A pragmatic approach in which different academic fields collaborate to directly respond to the problems faced in practice would be beneficial