Accountability and neglect in UK social care innovation

Innovation alters who is accountable for social care and how they are held to account. This article shows how organisational, institutional and technological innovation in infrastructures of social care can reconfigure accountability instruments and propel change between distinct modes of accountability. However, innovation also sustains neglect, both in terms of issues, objects and subjects missing from research, and in terms of low levels of institutional reflexivity mobilised to evaluate and direct innovation’s impacts. Evidenced using two-level situational analysis – across a UK research portfolio and within a public robotics lab – we argue that confronting this neglect is critical for post-pandemic reform.