Socialcaretalk.org is owned and maintained by the Medical Sociology and Health Experiences Research Group (MS & HERG) at the University of Oxford and promoted in partnership with the NIHR School for Social Care Research.
Social care talk is the sister site to HEXI - Health Experience Insights but focuses on social care rather than just health. We aim to help thousands of people each year to feel better prepared, informed and less alone in what they are going through.
The narratives, gathered by dedicated academic researchers through personal interviews, provide a unique and real perspective using people’s own words. Delve into a wealth of first-hand accounts that offer a glimpse into the broader impact of health and social care on every aspect of our lives.
Socialcaretalk.org was commissioned by Oxford University and published in 2021 by the DIPEx Charity to highlight social care issues and publish social care research. The DIPEx Charity closed in April 2026. The University of Oxford now publishes Socialcaretalk.org, but currently only features research copyrighted to the University of Oxford. All the research on Social care talk website is done using the same research methodology to create sections for the website. Some of the projects are led by collaborating universities such as the University of York using the same research methodology.
This website is available to publish other forms of social care research and is not limited to following the same methodology. If you are interested in publishing on this website, please contact hexi@phc.ox.ac.uk.
History
The idea behind the website came from Dr Ann McPherson and Dr. Andrew Herxheimer. Ann had breast cancer and Andrew was having a knee replacement. Both were doctors but wanted to know more than just the medical facts of their conditions. They wanted to find out how their daily lives would be affected and learn from other people who had experienced the same thing.
The DIPEx project (Database of Individual Patients’ Experiences) was born round Ann’s kitchen table in 1996. The first projects were published on dipex.org in July 2001. The DIPEx charity was founded in 2001 to run the website in partnership with the Health Experiences Research Group under licence from the University of Oxford. The copyright for all the research material on the website is held by the University of Oxford.
Social care talk and HEXI - Health Experience Insights now have sister sites using the same research methodology in more than twelve countries around the world, under the umbrella of Health Experiences International (formerly DIPEx International).
