Embracing change through being brave – reflections from NCASC 2024

This was well-attended with some great discussion with the audience about how to balance trying out new approaches with ensuring full engagement with your staff and the community so that the tech effectively meets the needs of those that draw on care and support. 

The session also covered the benefits of harnessing AI to free staff from mundane tasks, allowing them to spend more time on what they chose a social care career for in the first place, supporting people. One of the panel speakers, Georgia Chimbani, Corporate Director of Health and Adult Social Care at Tower Hamlets Council and a SCIE Trustee, put it well when she said that we accept AI in our private lives but feel reticent and risk averse in a work context. If we want to improve services and benefit from the positive change that AI can bring, we need to be brave and try it out with our colleagues and people with lived experience, accepting that we may get things wrong but understanding that if we all work together we can learn, adapt, and benefit, from its strengths. 

This theme of bravery also came out in the NCASC workshop SCIE ran on ‘how to enable innovation in social care’ drawing on learning from the DHSC’s Accelerating Reform Fund (ARF) for which SCIE is providing hands-on support, and a five-year research study ‘Supporting Adult Social Care Innovation (SASCI)’ led by London School of Economics (LSE) on how to scale innovation in adult social care. Dr. Juliette Malley (LSE) referenced Van de Ven’s comparison of innovation in social care to navigating a river –  “no-one controls the river”. If you want to go on your innovation journey, you have to take the first plunge into the river, rather than just let it drag you along unwillingly. And you won’t know what’s coming up, but the longer you do it, the better you get at managing the rocks and turns and headwinds coming at you. 

This is familiar to anyone who’s struggled to push through change in an organisation: sometimes you have to keep trying and it’s not on the first attempt that success is achieved. With innovation we need to be brave and build resilience through drawing on learning and support from others. Duc Tran, the Transformation Programme Manager leading the North West London Integrated Care System ARF projects, emphasised the critical role of robust governance and collaborative efforts among the five London Boroughs in driving project progress. He highlighted that collaboration fosters a unified agenda and aligns everyone toward a shared vision, reducing the perceived risks of change and making it feel like the natural and logical path forward. 

Kevin Minier, ARF co-production delivery team member and workshop panellist, commented on the impressive positive attitude and alignment of the workshop audience in their aspirations for integration and co-production, stating that “implementing ‘new’ ideas takes courage and we need to support those who are willing to do so”. 

It will be interesting to see if this desire across councils to make the best of what we currently have, trying out new technologies and transforming culture and service in the best interests of communities, will be reflected in the national policies that we will start to see emerge from the Government over the coming months. It feels like we are ready for change, and if we can collaborate and be brave together then surely we can harness the digital revolution for positive difference in a society which enables people who draw on social care to live fulfilling lives.   

As part of our consultancy offer, we want to help all those delivering care to adopt digital best practice confidently. If you’re wondering how to engage with digital innovation, and would like advice, guidance or simply an exploratory chat on digital innovation or other challenges you face, and how we can support you, please visit our consultancy page.