Care home services at the vanguard: a qualitative study exploring stakeholder views on the development and evaluation of novel, integrated approaches to enhancing healthcare in care homes.

Innovation in service delivery requires organisations to adopt common priorities and share responsibility for success. The vanguard programme is working to ensure health and local authorities have this commitment, but engaging care homes that may feel isolated from the welfare system needs sustained dialogue over the longer term. Evaluation of the programme needs to measure what is important to stakeholders, and not focus too closely on resource consumption.