Collaborating and innovating in social care to improve lives

Chief Executive’s report

Our purpose at SCIE is to collaborate and innovate with a whole range of partners so that people can easily receive social care, and through it, live more independent, fulfilling and better lives.

That is why we exist. But we couldn’t do it without you, our partners, and our amazing staff. Our achievements in the last year are joint achievements, and are down to the collaborative and innovative efforts that I see everywhere in social care, despite the hardship and the continuing pressures that so many of you working in social care face on a daily basis. I am proud that SCIE can help to shine a positive light on all the good work you do.

This has been a year of change, bringing fresh promise with the new Government’s talk of a National Care Service. As the Casey Commission moves forward in its efforts to design a better system for the future, we look forward to working with Baroness Casey and partners across the sector – crucially including people receiving care and support, and their family carers – to create sustainable solutions that will truly improve lives.

Across our not-for-profit consultancy, insights, training and resources outputs this year, I have never more strongly seen the power of collaboration and innovation. Perhaps particularly so in our work supporting the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)’s Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF). When I visited Worcestershire to understand their project better, the programme leads Kim Terry and Mel Smith were clearly passionate about what they were going to be able to achieve for unpaid carers. I spoke to carers who told me how this work was significantly transforming what had been a very difficult experience for them, helping them to feel supported and connected. The commitment and enthusiasm of staff members shone through as they showed me how innovations like assistive technology were improving lives.

We have now completed our main support role to the ARF, although we are continuing in a small way to help where we can. This was a first of its kind grant fund in England in its focus on identifying and scaling up innovations particularly for unpaid carers, whose enormous selfless contribution does much to keep the system going. Do read our independent report ‘Embracing change: scaling innovation in social care practice’, setting out invaluable key learnings for the sector and best practice so far. We hope it offers you solutions and powerful insights into how to start, sustain and scale innovation. We look forward to reporting back further on progress from this rare, interesting testbed of innovation in practice.

We have had a successful first year working with Partners in Care and Health (PCH) on a programme of sector-led improvement support for social care and public health services in councils, funded by the DHSC. Local authorities and practitioners tell us our direct support, and range of resources supplementing it, are helping them deliver improved services in areas such as digital transformation, housing, safeguarding and co-production. We’re also supporting local authorities requiring improvement post-Care Quality Commission (CQC inspection. I would like to thank all our partners, stakeholders, and supporters, along with my wonderful team at SCIE: every employee, the Board of Trustees, our Co-production Steering Group and wider network who collectively have delivered another successful year of impact to improve lives. It is only together that we can ensure everyone receives high quality care that enables choice, control and independence.

Kathryn Smith, Chief Executive, SCIE

Chair’s report

Nine years of purpose, challenge, and reform

When I took on the role of Chair at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in July 2017, I joined an organisation with a distinguished legacy and a deep sense of mission. What I couldn’t have fully appreciated then was just how much this journey would come to define my own commitment to social care reform – and how profoundly the values of co-production, evidence and partnership would shape both the direction of SCIE and the wider reform narrative.

SCIE’s story over the past nine years is one of hard-won transformation – internally, as we restructured and reimagined the organisation for resilience and impact, and externally, as we played an increasingly vital role in responding to crises, shaping policy and catalysing long-overdue change in adult social care. When I arrived, SCIE faced financial fragility. Deficits were ongoing, and though austerity-era funding cuts contributed to the cause, the real challenge ran deeper. The business model had become unsustainable, our operating systems outdated and our organisational footprint misaligned with our income. We needed to change fundamentally to survive – let alone thrive.

Together with our exceptional Board and staff – and most crucially, in partnership with Kathryn Marsden (then Smith), whom I had the privilege of appointing as Chief Executive – we delivered that change. Kathryn brought strategic discipline, clarity of vision, and an unwavering commitment to our values. Her leadership through periods of uncertainty, including the COVID-19 pandemic, was exceptional. We transitioned SCIE into a remote-first organisation, modernised IT and finance systems, exited costly long-term liabilities such as the defined-benefit pension scheme, and diversified income streams. These changes were not easy. They required tough decisions and deep candour. But they worked. We moved from deficits to four consecutive surpluses and counting, built a meaningful reserve, and made strategic investments to create an organisation that is both financially resilient and fit for the future. These internal reforms matter not just for their own sake, but because they have strengthened SCIE’s role as part of the sector’s critical infrastructure – trusted to translate policy into practice, to convene diverse voices, and to deliver meaningful change.

Throughout my tenure, SCIE has remained close to the pulse of the sector. During the pandemic, we launched the National COVID Hub in record time, providing timely guidance and safeguarding resources accessed by hundreds of thousands. We supported local authorities and providers in adapting to fast[1]changing demands, showing SCIE at its agile best – anchored in purpose, driven by need.

But SCIE’s role has extended far beyond crisis response. We have consistently influenced national policy – co-chairing the Commission on the Role of Housing in the Future of Care and Support, embedding Think Local Act Personal (TLAP)’s ‘Making it Real’ framework in CQC’s new assurance model, contributing to the Adult Social Care White Paper, and shaping innovation through the ARF and sector-led improvement programmes. Among these, I am particularly proud of SCIE’s work in 2024/25 supporting the DHSC’s ARF. By helping local systems innovate for unpaid carers, SCIE demonstrated how lived experience and local insight can drive practical solutions with national relevance. This work exemplified the best of SCIE – strategic, people-centred, and grounded in the urgent realities of the system.

SCIE has actively contributed to key system reviews and reform agendas – most recently through our work to support the Casey Commission. These interventions are not merely consultative; they are part of how we embed reform. From parliamentary scrutiny to national design efforts, SCIE has become a bridge between people’s experience and policy ambition. SCIE Annual Report 2025 | 4 The thread that runs through it all is the unfinished business of the Care Act 2014 – a law I had the privilege of helping shape as Care Services Minister. That legislation was a watershed moment: it consolidated decades of fragmented policy, placed wellbeing at the heart of care, strengthened rights for carers and promised a lifetime cap on care costs. It was, and remains, the most coherent blueprint for modern social care this country has produced.

But the promise of the Care Act has too often been betrayed by a lack of delivery. The cap, initially due in 2016, was deferred repeatedly before being finally abandoned in 2024. Local authorities, under increasing financial strain, continue to ration services. Millions of older people and working-age disabled adults remain unsupported. And unpaid carers – around 1.5 million providing more than 50 hours of care a week – shoulder a burden valued at £184 billion annually, often at enormous personal cost.

This is not just a policy failure. It is a moral failure – a systemic reluctance to match legislative vision with political resolve and investment. SCIE’s internal renewal over these nine years has therefore never been just about financial turnaround or operational efficiency. It has been about ensuring that our organisation was ready to meet this national moment with clarity, credibility, and impact.

That moment may now be upon us. The launch of the Casey Commission in early 2025 represents the most promising opportunity in over a decade to restart reform. With interim proposals expected in 2026 and a full vision by 2028 – including the potential creation of a National Care Service underpinned by national care standards – this is a critical juncture. The Commission has rightly warned that failure is possible without a compelling, costed, data-driven case for reform. SCIE continues to argue that reform must not begin from scratch. The Care Act provides the foundation. What’s needed now is implementation: embedding co[1]production as a form of governance, prioritising prevention investment, defining national care standards and creating enduring political consensus. We must move from aspiration to delivery—from legislation to lived experience.

As I prepare to hand over the baton, I do so with full confidence in SCIE’s future. The organisation is financially sound, strategically focused and equipped with an exceptional leadership team. It is ready not only to continue delivering impact today, but to help shape the system we will need for the decade to come: one built on equity, national consistency and meaningful accountability. The next Chair will inherit an organisation well placed to support the implementation of national standards, the evolution of assurance models and the delivery of long-term reform. Our direction is now firmly future-facing – strengthening the infrastructure of care with the same determination that once rescued it from fragility.

I want to thank everyone who has shared this journey: staff, trustees, partners and above all, the people and communities we exist to serve. SCIE has been my professional home for nearly a decade, but it has also been something more: a place where values meet action, and where reform is not just advocated, but actively built. I hope the legacy we leave is clear: an organisation that lives the values it champions, that has helped steer the sector through storm and change and that now stands ready to support the transformation our country so urgently needs. It has been an honour to serve.

Rt Hon Paul Burstow, Chair, SCIE