Watch our story
Without big changes to the way we think about social care, we and the people we care about face losing control of our lives and contact with the people and things that make our lives worthwhile. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Watch our new film, narrated by actress, comedian, broadcaster and international disability rights activist Liz Carr and directed by multi-award winning filmmaker Yoav Segal.
View accessible versions, including BSL, subtitles and comic book.
There are many examples of social care helping us to achieve our vision, supporting us and the people we care about to live our lives our way, while contributing to and feeling part of our communities. But the current system is struggling to deliver this for everyone.
To achieve our vision, social care needs to be reimagined, redesigned and properly resourced. If we fail to do so, many more of us face a future where, should we need to draw on care or support to live our lives, risk losing control and contact with the people and things that make our lives worthwhile.
Social Care Future is pursuing this future in three ways:
Storytelling
Firing people’s imagination about a brighter future for social care and how we can get there and building public support for change.
Building people power
Creating and sharing the know-how and tools for people to pursue change in their own lives and communities, while bringing people together nationally at key moments to call for change.
Making change together
bringing together those with the responsibility and power to make change happen to share ideas, develop solutions and overcome barriers.
Read more about our plans
How we got here
Social Care Future emerged in 2018, born out of frustration at the absence of people who themselves draw on social care in discussions about the future. We held a three-day gathering in Manchester, bringing together like-minded and values-aligned people to begin plotting a way towards the future. The success of this get-together gave us the hope that we could begin building a new movement.
Every successful movement needs a shared vision and story, and we knew that to have any impact on the world, we’d need to tell a story in a way that commanded the attention and support of the wider public. So the first thing we did together was to write our vision and story of change.
Photo courtesy of ABC
‘We all want to live in the place we call home, with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us’
It has gone on to inspire and animate people and organisations across the field of social care and beyond, including many local councils, professional associations, campaigning charities, parliamentary committees and political parties, offering a much needed ‘north star’.
We subsequently developed our story further, carrying out extensive public audience research to understand how best to frame it to win public support.
Having offered this vision, we then sought to give direction to how it could be achieved. We shared what we called ‘glimpses of the future in the present’, so that people could see from current practices that the future we were seeking was possible to achieve.
How we work
The Social Care Future movement is hosted and supported by the charity In Control, which was established to create a society where people at risk of being excluded have the support they need to live a good life and where everyone is able to make a valued contribution.
It is convened on an unpaid, voluntary basis, by Anna Severwright, Martin Routledge, Julie Stansfield and Neil Crowther, who each bring personal and professional experience of and insight into social care.
A wider ‘actives’ group, involving people who draw on support, providers and voluntary and community groups, helps provide overall direction, as well as financial support to specific activities.
A number of groups, programmes or communities of support sit under or have spun out of Social Care Future, including the More than a Provider group of social care providers, our Local Councils Community of Support and our Using the Law initiative.
Social Care Future is not ‘one thing’ but a range of connected networks, groups, and activities, with shared vision and values, working towards a brighter future.
Image courtesy of Stay Up Late
Changing the story
