As a system focused charity we want to use the skills and resources we have to fulfil our charitable vision of a society which enables people who draw on social care to live fulfilling lives.
Charitable activities
If you are interested in helping to fund any of our charitable activities which are featured below, do please get in touch or click on the donate button below. Help create lasting system change and work with trusted experts who have extensive reach across the social care sector.
Thank you for your interest and support.
Recent charitable activities
SCIE aims to embed co-production and the voice of people with lived experience in the design and delivery of care and support services and in policy and research to better meet people’s needs.
In order to fulfil this, we need to ensure that we build our knowledge base about what works in social care with the support and partnership of those that use social care. This ensures that any work we undertake works on a practical as well as a strategic level.
Our Co-production Steering Group advises SCIE on the development of the co-production strategy ensuring all SCIE’s work is informed by the voice of lived experience. They ensure, as an organisation, that we live up to our name in terms of excellence in all that we do.
In line with SCIE’s values we recognise the skill and time of the people we work with and want to continue to be able to pay them for their input in the same way a staff member would be paid.
Each year SCIE covers these costs as an important element of our charitable offer. This equates to approximately £600 per week which provides real value as it is integral to all of our work.
“I want to be fully involved as soon as the idea blossoms. Asking me for my opinion once the idea is set means that I can’t influence the agenda.”
Member of SCIE’s Co-production Steering Group
In the summer of 2023 SCIE, Anthropos and the Dementia Services Development Centre (DSDC) at the University of Stirling were successful in their joint application for funding from the prestigious Longitude Prize on dementia which is funded by Alzheimer’s Society and Innovate UK and delivered by Challenge Works.
The funding will enable our partnership to develop technology that learns about the lives of people with early-mid stage dementia and can detect environmental and behavioural changes associated with periods of distress, anxiety and disorientation, particularly in the evening and nighttime.
These insights could then be used to suggest a helpful intervention for the family or care provider to help reduce that distress to support people living with dementia, remain independent in their homes.
Our exciting project is one of 24 semi-finalist Discovery Award Winners that received seed funding grants as part of the overall £4m Longitude Prize on Dementia driving the co-creation of personalised technologies to help people living with dementia enjoy independent and fulfilled lives.
More information about the Longitude Prize can be found here.
The Commission on the Role of Housing in the Future of Care and Support, funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust and led by SCIE was established in November 2020. The Commission set out a vision and roadmap for providing more options for housing with care and support. It is a 10-year plan to support the health and social care sector to understand how housing with care and support could be planned, commissioned, designed and delivered.
The purpose of this project was to address the inequalities that contributed to people with learning disabilities being six times more likely to die from COVID-19.
New guidance has now been published and we want to thank the various charitable trusts and foundations that have kindly made this project possible. This includes the National Lottery Community Fund and the Santa Barbara Heights Charitable Trust and others who wish to remain anonymous.
Future charitable activities – match funding opportunities
In 2023 SCIE established a strategic investment fund for the purpose of generating innovative, standalone activity focused on driving high impact in line with our strategic and charitable objectives.
This has led to the development of SCIE’s first Social Care Impact Awards for small and micro social care organisations. This investment means we are reaching segments of the care sector who would not ordinarily be able to access our consultancy, insights, training and resources support.
“Winning this award means we can move forward with our mission of reaching as many people within our community as possible. Our goal is to widen our horizons and be able to bring our unique offerings to those in need in surrounding areas. The consultancy and training we will receive for winning this wonderful award will give us the springboard to do just that and continue “Empowering Every Ability’.” Team2Gether Suffolk, one of our awards winners.
Ultimately, our aim is to improve the lives of those who draw on care and support and we will be providing updates on the progress of the new award winners and the impact of our support in due course.
This year, we have received pro-bono support from a corporate partner in the design and development of the awards and also received match funding to widen the prize pool by the Rayne Foundation. We are extremely grateful for both their support.
If you are interested in sponsoring or match funding our 2026 Social Care Impact Awards do please get in touch.
It has long been established that the transition from children’s social care to adult’s social care can be badly managed, despite good legislation and regulations to protect the rights of children, young people and their families.
There is a move from a supportive and interventionist children’s social care system to a strengths-based and empowering adult social care system. And unless the gap between these two systems is bridged, it is young adults and their families who suffer.
Information advice and guidance for young people and their families is hard to access and hard to interpret.
The best resource and the most powerful advocates for young people are themselves and their network. Ultimately, SCIE is seeking to empower young people and their families to navigate the system well, advocate for their own choices, needs and preferences and be well positioned to withstand the shortfalls, difficulties and demands on the system.
We have a range of projects related to children’s social care that we are seeking match funding for and if you are interested in collaborating, partnering or funding these in any way, do please get in touch and we can provide further details. Together we can make real system change impact.
Our Longitude Prize on Dementia project was inspired by our shared commitment to improving the lives of people living with dementia. While up to 30% of people living with dementia experience periods of distress, anxiety and disorientation in the evening and at night, there was not enough research into this, particularly for those living alone. We wanted to better understand these periods of distress, learn how we could detect them, and then identify helpful interventions to try to reduce them.
With our team’s expertise and personal connections to dementia, we saw an opportunity to contribute meaningful solutions. By combining research, technology, and care practices, we aimed to promote independence, provide timely care, and support individuals as well as care staff and family carers. Our goal was to improve quality of life by developing a holistic, unobtrusive, and person-centred approach to managing distress, anxiety, and disorientation in dementia.
As a follow on from the proof-of-concept pilot we undertook during the Longitude Prize on Dementia, we are now seeking funding to gain further insights into these periods of distress. In doing so we will be able to identify and respond to a wider range of issues with appropriate suggestions for an intervention.
If you would like further information or would like to help match fund this project please get in touch.