The Centre for Social Care and Artificial Intelligence Learning (SCALE) will harness the potential of AI for social care, aiming to kickstart activity and build critical mass in a new, exciting, and fast-moving cross-disciplinary research area.
Increasing demand and cuts in funding for social care are posing significant challenges to the sector. Artificial intelligence offers the potential to address these challenges, and build smarter, more agile, and more effective social care services that support and enhance human relationships.
We launched in April 2025 after receiving £1.8 million in funding from Health and Care Research Wales. SCALE brings together multi-disciplinary expertise from across Cardiff University and fosters collaboration with organisations and groups across the UK. We also work with our partners Swansea University, CASCADE and CARE.
Aims
As incorrect decisions in social care have high potential for harm, introducing AI will require new techniques to manage risk and safety. Solutions must also be cost-effective, and ensure there is no digital divide in the level and quality of care provided.
SCALE will deliver real-world impact by placing those with direct experience of services at the centre of our work. We will include service users from adult and children’s social care, as well as practitioners and policymakers, to build sustainable long-term collaborations and to secure external funding.
Research
Our research will cover all areas of Children’s and Adult Social Care with Artificial Intelligence (including Natural Language Processing, Data Science and Analytics, Robotics, Visual Computing).
As we have staff from both the School of Computer Science and Informatics and the School of Social Sciences, our research is truly interdisciplinary.
We will initially focus on:
- supporting the social care workforce and leadership
- supporting adults, children, carers, and families
- analysing data in new and interesting ways