PhD Studentship: Collaboration in a Cold Climate: Integrated Care Systems in England’s Health and Care Sector

Entry: October 2024

This fully-funded studentship will investigate the challenges of collaborating in today’s health and social care sector. A collaboration between KCL and South East London Integrated Care System (SEL ICS), it will offer a student the opportunity to explore some of the most pressing challenges facing contemporary public sectors. It will be supervised by Dr Sam van Elk, Dr Kalpa Kharicha and Dr Alec Fraser at KCL with additional support from SEL ICS. The studentship will offer close links to the NIHR Health and Social Care Workforce Policy Research Unit (based in the KCL Policy Institute), which works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care. It would represent an excellent opportunity for those on a pathway towards an academic career; or to someone with experience in health and/or social care interested in further study.

The project

As public organisations face intensifying operational and financial pressures, collaboration is increasingly touted as the answer to their challenges. While research affirms that collaboration can ease such pressures, it warns that those same pressures can make collaboration all-the-harder to achieve. Accordingly, it is vital to understand how public organisations can navigate such challenges to reap collaboration’s benefits. Researching this is tricky: organisations who collaborate are self-selecting, so are often those facing atypically small barriers to doing so. Focusing on them would offer an artificially positive picture of attempts to collaborate amidst such pressures.

This project addresses this challenge through a study of an ICS. These new, geographical groupings of health and care organisations are required to collaborate against a background of operational and financial pressures. With ICS membership mandated by law, these collaborators are not self-selecting, so likely face a range of different challenges. Understanding the barriers to collaborating amidst operational and financial pressures and how people navigate them will support both the ICS being studied and other organisations seeking collaboration in today’s public sector.

This collaborative studentship will involve working closely not only with your academic team, but also with the organisations that you study. Regular rounds of feedback to them, and responsiveness to their pressing questions will be as important as producing high-quality, independent academic research. Through its links to the Policy Institute, the studentship will also offer the student clear routes to communicate their findings to policy actors. As such, it will represent an ideal opportunity to develop the collaboration and policy impact skills vital in contemporary academia.

Candidates should have a strong background in qualitative social scientific research, with an undergraduate or higher degree in a relevant social science, health or social care discipline. We particularly welcome applications from those with experience of studying collaboration; financial and/or operational challenges; or of working in the health and social care sector.

Eligibility

Satisfy the entry requirements for the PhD programme in Management Research. Home, EU and International students are eligible to apply. You will be required to live in the UK throughout your full-time studies.

Application process.

Please submit the following documents to kbs-phd@kcl.ac.uk by 8^th May 2024, 5:00pm UK time (please add KBSCOLLAB2024 in the title):

• A CV covering your educational qualifications and grades, and your prior work experience, of around 2 sides of A4
• Your academic transcripts
• A 1250 words* cover letter detailing the main challenges faced by ICSs today; and a research design to address the question ‘How do health and social care organisations facing significant operational and financial challenges attempt to collaborate, and with what success?
• One academic reference letter; or reference letter from a health or social care employer (to be sent to us direct from the referee) 

*All word limits exclude references. 

For more information, or to discuss the position, please contact Dr Sam van Elk at sam.van_elk@kcl.ac.uk.

Funding Comment

Home, EU and International studentships are available to students with outstanding research potential. Studentships cover tuition fees for three years, the pending submission status fee and a stipend of approximately £20K/annum (2023-2024 rate is £20,622), with small, annual inflationary increases. 4 years Full Time.