Reflecting on our exploration of new service models in adult social care


Adult social care remains an unresolved local government pressure point. In 2022, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) spring survey reported that social services were expected to deliver £597m in savings whilst simultaneously dealing with increased referrals and complexity of cases.

In response to this, LOTI launched the New Service Models Innovation Fund in November 2022, to support boroughs to test radical approaches to help improve outcomes for people needing adult social care support. As part of this, the following two projects were offered up to £100K each to develop and test innovative approaches.

Project 1: Piloting a home care cooperative in Clapton and
Project 2: Developing a prototype multi-agency data platform for frontline care workers

This fund was important to LOTI because for the first time, as local government we were intentionally looking at piloting fundamental change type approaches as opposed to the usual sticking plasters. As a result the two selected projects sought to challenge the more traditional approaches to delivering social care.

In this blog, I will summraise the key insights from LOTI’s funded projects which sought to test new service models in adult social care.

A Strengths Based Approach: Clapton’s Home Care Cooperative
In this project, Hackney council partnered with Equal Care Co-op to test a new service delivery model to deliver home care in the Clapton area of Hackney.

This pilot sought to challenge the traditional top-down approach of care provision by giving more power to the individual needing care and their local community. This model relies on existing community infrastructure, ensuring no duplication of support, whilst strengthening ties in communities.

A key, unresolved sector-wide challenge here is that of the real cost of care.

Whilst a co-op model unlocks better pay and more opportunities to deliver person-centred care, it is also entirely dependent on local authority budgets being able to meet the ultimate costs of care. What we realised as part of this project is that local authority budgets are complex and dependent on central government social care budget policies.

A holistic Data-Enabled Care Approach
Meanwhile, Hounslow and Brent tackled another crucial aspect of care delivery—information access. In partnership with Social Finance, they developed a multi-agency data platform prototype that gives social workers a more complete picture of the people they support.

It’s about breaking organisational silos to understand the full context of someone’s life—their family situations, relationships, and broader needs so that care packages can be more appropriately tailored to individual needs.

A key insight here was that whilst similar projects are already underway (with the largest one being the London Care Record) it’s adoption and proper use of these tools that shapes the desired impact. Check out our toolkit that captures useful tools if you are thinking about rolling out something similar locally.

Looking to the future

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of these pilots is the practical outputs that can be used by local government practitioners. The Clapton pilot will produce a service specification that any borough can use to commission similar services. Meanwhile, the data platform could potentially be adapted for use across London’s social care services.

The real value though lies in the scalability and adoption of these solutions. LOTI is in conversations with partners about potential funding that can help scale / rollout these and other related solutions in this space.

Adult Social Care Fund

Genta Hajri
20 January 2025 ·
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