Table of Contents
Type: Dissertation Proposal | Subject: Health and Social Care | Level: Masters | Word Count: ~2,350 words
This model dissertation proposal was produced by an Essays UK specialist as reference material for learning purposes only. For support in this field, see our health and social care writing experts.
Overview: This model dissertation proposal shows how a Masters-level health and social care researcher might design a qualitative study into the barriers family carers face when accessing community dementia care in the UK. It illustrates the structure, academic register and methodological reasoning expected in a research proposal, moving from background and objectives through to method, timeline and ethics.
Dementia is one of the most significant health and social care challenges facing the United Kingdom. It is estimated that around 900,000 people are currently living with dementia across the UK, a figure widely projected to rise to approximately 1.6 million by 2040 as the population continues to age (Wittenberg et al., 2019; Alzheimer’s Society, 2022). The majority of people with dementia live in their own homes rather than in residential settings, and a substantial proportion of the support they rely upon is provided not by paid professionals but by unpaid family carers – spouses, adult children, siblings and friends. These carers frequently take on responsibilities spanning personal care, medication management, financial administration, emotional support and the day-to-day coordination of appointments across health and social care.
National policy has increasingly recognised both the value of community-based care and the importance of supporting those who provide unpaid care. The Care Act 2014 placed a statutory duty on local authorities to assess and, where eligible, meet the needs of carers in their own right, while the NHS Long Term Plan (NHS England, 2019) reaffirmed a commitment to personalised, community-oriented and integrated care. More recently, the adult social care reform white paper (Department of Health and Social Care, 2021) restated the ambition of enabling people to live well in their own homes and communities. Clinical guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (2018) similarly emphasises coordinated, person-centred support for people living with dementia and those who care for them.
Despite this policy consensus, there is considerable evidence that family carers continue to encounter serious difficulties when attempting to secure appropriate support. National surveys of unpaid carers consistently report unmet need, financial strain and a sense of being left to manage alone (Carers UK, 2022). Commentators frequently describe fragmentation between health and social care, inconsistency in local provision, and the effects of sustained funding pressure on adult social care. The gap between the aspirations expressed in policy and the realities experienced by families is therefore an area of pressing concern – and one that qualitative research is particularly well suited to illuminate.
This proposal outlines a qualitative study that seeks to understand, from the perspective of carers themselves, the barriers encountered in accessing community dementia care. By privileging carers’ own accounts, the study aims to generate insight that can inform more responsive service design. The remainder of the proposal sets out the aim and objectives, situates the study within the existing literature, details the proposed methodology, and addresses the timeline and ethical considerations.
The overarching aim of the proposed study is to explore the barriers that family carers experience when accessing community-based dementia care and support services in the UK. In pursuit of this aim, the study will address four objectives:
The objectives are expressed through three research questions:
This section situates the proposed study within three strands of the existing literature: the policy and service context of community dementia care, the evidence on carer experience and unmet need, and the methodological gap the study seeks to address. A full systematic review will be undertaken during the opening phase of the dissertation; the summary below establishes the rationale for the study.
The direction of UK policy over the past decade has been towards integration, personalisation and care delivered closer to home. The Care Act 2014 reframed carers as individuals with their own rights to assessment and support, while the NHS Long Term Plan (NHS England, 2019) prioritised joined-up working between primary care, community services and social care. NICE guidance (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2018) sets clear expectations for coordinated dementia care, including the role of care coordinators and the provision of information and respite. Internationally, the World Health Organization (2021) has likewise called for strengthened community responses to dementia. Yet the literature repeatedly notes a gap between these aspirations and the resources available to realise them, particularly in the context of long-standing pressure on adult social care budgets.
A substantial body of research has examined the experiences of those who care for a relative with dementia. Studies and national surveys describe high levels of physical and psychological strain, financial hardship and social isolation among unpaid carers (Carers UK, 2022). Recurring themes in this literature include difficulty obtaining a timely diagnosis, limited and inconsistent information about available services, complex and opaque assessment processes, and a sense that support is reactive rather than anticipatory. Carers frequently report having to act as de facto care coordinators, navigating multiple agencies with little guidance. Where support is accessed, its quality and continuity are reported to vary considerably between localities – a pattern often characterised in public debate as a postcode lottery.
While quantitative surveys have been valuable in quantifying the scale of unmet need, they are less able to capture the processes through which barriers arise and are experienced. Qualitative accounts exist, but there remains scope for in-depth, contemporary research that focuses specifically on barriers to access as understood by carers, and that does so in the light of recent policy developments. The proposed study responds to this gap by generating rich, interview-based data and analysing it through a theoretically informed thematic lens. In doing so, it aims to complement existing survey evidence with a more detailed understanding of how and why carers struggle to access the support to which they are, in principle, entitled.
The study will adopt a qualitative research design underpinned by an interpretivist philosophical position. Interpretivism is appropriate because the study is concerned with subjective meaning – how carers themselves understand and make sense of their experiences – rather than with measuring variables or testing hypotheses. A qualitative, exploratory design allows the research to remain open to unanticipated issues and to prioritise depth of understanding over breadth. The study is framed within a broadly social-constructionist epistemology, which recognises that carers’ accounts are shaped by their social and institutional contexts.
Purposive sampling will be used to recruit participants who can speak directly to the research questions. The target sample is 12 to 15 family carers of people living with dementia in the community, a range consistent with the depth-oriented aims of the study and with the point at which thematic saturation is commonly anticipated in interview research of this kind. Maximum-variation sampling will be sought so that the sample includes carers of differing relationships to the person with dementia, ages and geographical areas. Recruitment will take place through third-sector organisations such as carer support groups and dementia charities, which will be asked to share study information with their members. Potential participants will contact the researcher directly, ensuring that participation is self-selecting and voluntary. The proposed inclusion and exclusion criteria are summarised below.
| Inclusion Criteria | Exclusion Criteria |
|---|---|
| Aged 18 or over | Carers aged under 18 |
| Currently providing, or having provided within the last 12 months, unpaid care for a relative or friend with a diagnosis of dementia living in the community | Paid or professional carers acting in a formal capacity |
| Able to take part in an interview in English | Caring solely for someone in long-term residential care throughout the care period |
| Able to provide informed consent on their own behalf | Unable to provide informed consent |
Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews, each lasting approximately 45 to 60 minutes. Interviews will be conducted either face to face or by video call, according to participant preference, in order to maximise accessibility for carers whose responsibilities may make travel difficult. A flexible topic guide will structure the conversations while allowing participants to raise the issues that matter most to them. The guide will cover the pathway from first seeking help, experiences of assessment and service provision, the specific barriers encountered, the strategies adopted in response, and views on what would improve access. With consent, interviews will be audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Brief field notes will be made after each interview to capture contextual observations and to support reflexivity.
Transcripts will be analysed using reflexive thematic analysis following the six-phase approach described by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2021): familiarisation with the data; generation of initial codes; construction of candidate themes; reviewing themes; defining and naming themes; and producing the written account. Analysis will be primarily inductive, allowing themes to be grounded in participants’ accounts, while remaining sensitive to the conceptual framing provided by the literature on access to care. Coding will be supported by qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo to aid organisation and retrieval. An illustrative set of anticipated themes – offered here purely to demonstrate analytical intent, not to pre-empt the findings – might include navigating a fragmented system, information as a barrier, and the emotional cost of seeking help.
Rather than relying on criteria drawn from quantitative research, the study will address quality through the framework of trustworthiness proposed by Lincoln and Guba (1985), encompassing credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Credibility will be supported through sustained engagement with the data and the keeping of an audit trail; transferability through rich, contextual description; and confirmability through reflexive journaling that makes the researcher’s influence on the research explicit. Reporting will be guided by the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (Tong, Sainsbury and Craig, 2007) to ensure transparency and rigour.
The study is planned to run over a nine-month period, consistent with the timescale of a Masters dissertation. The indicative schedule below allows for overlap between stages, particularly between data collection and early analysis.
| Phase | Activity | Indicative Timing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Literature review and finalisation of the topic guide | Months 1–2 |
| 2 | Preparation and submission of the ethics application | Month 2 |
| 3 | Recruitment and distribution of participant information | Months 3–4 |
| 4 | Data collection (interviews) | Months 4–6 |
| 5 | Transcription and thematic analysis | Months 5–7 |
| 6 | Writing up and discussion of findings | Months 7–8 |
| 7 | Review, revision and submission | Month 9 |
The study involves a group that may include people in vulnerable circumstances and discusses potentially sensitive and emotive experiences. Ethical approval will be sought from the relevant university research ethics committee before any recruitment begins, and the study will be conducted in accordance with recognised research governance standards.
Informed consent is central to the study. Prospective participants will receive a clear participant information sheet explaining the purpose of the research, what participation involves and their rights, and will provide written consent before interviews take place. Participation will be entirely voluntary, and participants will be free to withdraw at any point up to the completion of analysis, without giving a reason and without any disadvantage. It is important to note that the research engages carers, who are able to consent on their own behalf; the person with dementia will not be a participant, and participants will be asked to avoid disclosing identifying information about the relative for whom they care.
Because interviews may touch on distressing experiences, the researcher will remain alert to signs of discomfort, will remind participants that they need not answer any question, and will provide a list of relevant support organisations at the close of each interview. Confidentiality and data protection will be maintained in line with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR: audio recordings and transcripts will be stored securely on encrypted, password-protected university systems; identifying details will be removed during transcription; and participants will be referred to by pseudonyms in all outputs. Data will be retained only for as long as required by the university’s data management policy and will then be securely destroyed.
By foregrounding the perspectives of family carers, the proposed study is expected to contribute a detailed, contemporary account of the barriers that impede access to community dementia care in the UK. Such insight has clear practical relevance: it may help commissioners and practitioners to identify where, along the care pathway, support most often breaks down, and to design services that are more navigable, better coordinated and more responsive to carers’ needs. The findings may also offer modest conceptual value by illuminating the mechanisms through which policy aspirations are, or are not, translated into accessible support at the local level.
In summary, this proposal has set out the rationale, aim and objectives for a qualitative interview study of carers’ experiences, together with a methodology grounded in reflexive thematic analysis and a clear plan for the timeline and ethical conduct. Subject to ethical approval, the study offers a feasible and worthwhile means of generating knowledge that is directly relevant to improving the lives of people with dementia and those who care for them.
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