In this blog, our Programme Development Lead Holly Baine reflects on the first year of the Better Careers for Better Care programme grants and shares the Foundation’s plans to build on what has been learnt and achieved so far.
It is now just over a year since we made the first grants through Better Careers for Better Care, the Foundation’s first proactive grant-making programme.
We made eight grants through an open call focused on transformation within adult social care, and in particular on workforce development and career progression opportunities. We based our funding priorities on what we had heard from the sector through a period of learning and consultation.
This is the first time the Foundation has taken a strategic and collaborative approach in one of our priority areas, exploring how our limited resources can have more impact. Our sister organisation, The Rayne Trust, is now taking the same approach through the Where People Meet programme, funding into community centres.
You can learn more about our Director Crispin’s reason for taking this approach in this blog.
The first year of funding
The open call for expressions of interest closed in early 2024, receiving 48 bids for funding from across England. An assessment panel, including External Advisers with lived and learned experience, shortlisted proposals to take to trustees for decision in June and September that year, allocating the full £2 million designated pot.
Six of the grants are place-based, where the funded work creates career progression or training opportunities. In all six programmes of work, commissioners are working alongside providers, seeking to capture impact in order to embed and sustain the opportunities.
We made two grants to national organisations supporting and enabling those working in social care to share their stories, shift the narrative, and influence both policy and strategic decision-making at a national level.
The partner organisations from the eight programmes of work have formed an engaged and supportive Community of Practice (CoP) that meets quarterly to share updates, successes and challenges.
Through the CoP, we have identified themes across the programmes of work, and we have held working groups with grant partners to explore them in more depth. Themes have included care worker participation, healthcare delegation, outcomes-focused commissioning, leadership, and value and recognition of social care.
The CoP has created the space for grant partners to build relationships across different parts of the care sector, to learn from each other and act as critical friends as they seek to address the many challenges facing the social care workforce.
For us at the Foundation, being alongside the grant partners as they deliver the work has provided invaluable learning which has shaped the next iteration of the programme. We are very grateful for the trust and candour of all those involved.
Building on what we have learnt so far
Being alongside grant partners as their programmes of work have rolled out has taught us a huge amount. Grant partners have higlighted the value of independent and flexible funding which allows colleagues to pivot as they learn and respond to evolving landscapes at the local, regional, and national levels.
At the start of the programme we created an impact framework with our learning partner Bean Research which focuses on outcomes and articulates what we hope to achieve across the funding. We are excited to share our first-year learning report with those in both funding and social care spaces towards the end of 2025.
We have also begun to utilise our position as a funder to convene and have seen the value of doing so without a specific agenda.
In November 2024, alongside the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, we brought together a group of stakeholders from across the social care sector to explore what a powerful care workforce would look like and what we can do to help achieve this. This both built our understanding of the issues and supported others to make connections and hear different viewpoints.
The staff team has shared our learning with our trustees on an ongoing basis. Given the momentum of the current grant-making programme and the opportunity presented by the government’s focus on reform of adult social care, there is support across the Foundation to build further on the Better Careers for Better Care programme.
As such, in March 2025 the Board agreed to the development of strategic grants in the devolved nations, a further open call focused on developing and embedding cultures of collaboration to support workforce development, and to the Foundation taking a more active role in convening leaders in social care.
Grants in Wales and Scotland
Due to the devolved nature of health and social care, the 2024 open call was only open to organisations working in England. However, as a UK funder, it was always our ambition to also fund in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are delighted that in 2025, trustees agreed strategic grants in Wales and Scotland.
In March, we made a grant to Social Care Wales to support their work to embed positive cultures within adult social care. The work is in partnership with Care Inspectorate Wales and builds on the recently launched Supporting Positive Cultures Guide to help social care leaders and managers build and grow positive cultures in their organisations. Learn more about the work here.
In June, we made a grant to the University of Stirling in partnership with the IMPACT Centre. Building on a 12-month ‘Demonstrator’ project that brought together strategic partners across Scotland, the Stirling team will now move into an implementation phase, with the aim of shifting the narrative at a systems level. The team is working collaboratively with ADASS, Social Care Future and FrameWorks UK to ensure similar work is aligned across Scotland and England.
A further open call
Through discussions with current grant partners and other key sector stakeholders, it has become clear that the complexity of commissioning and provision, and the transactional, competitive and/or hierarchical relationships within adult social care, act as significant barriers to achieving and sustaining change.
In response to this, trustees have agreed to a further open call focused on developing and embedding the cultures of collaboration needed to enable and sustain career opportunities for care workers.
Trustees have allocated £900,000 to the open call and we envisage making a further five grants. The open call will be live in early 2026 and we will seek proposals that run for up to two years to align with both our current reporting timeline and that of the Casey Commission.
As with the first open call, we will seek support from External Advisors in the assessment process, and we will work collaboratively with shortlisted partners to develop the proposals for Board. Grant partners will join the established Community of Practice and we will caputre outcomes and learning as part of the evaluation by Bean Research.
Convening
Through our grant-making and relationships with key stakeholders, we have built our understanding of workforce development and the challenges that face adult social care more broadly. We can also see that there is added value in the Foundation acting as a convener of others.
While we care deeply about the quality of care available to people and believe passionately in the value of carers, we know we don’t have the answers to the challenges the sector faces. As an independent funder, we sit on the outside and are therefore able to provide a neutral space for discussion across different parts of the sector. We will develop this work in collaboration with others in 2026.
In September this year, we brought together the funders we know already invest in adult social care to build a shared understanding of our current activity and to identify opportunities for collaboration.
Ultimately, we would like to engage a broader group of funders so that we can illustrate how investing in the adult social care workforce can enable funders to achieve impact in their priority areas.
For us, we believe investing in the care workforce will improve the experience of people in later life and their carers. For others, they may achieve impact in advancing social, racial and gender justice, tackling poverty, or supporting migrant workers, for example.
Upcoming ways to engage
We are delighted that by December we will be able to share the first-year learning report from Bean Research. The report will share progress towards the outcomes we established through the impact framework and highlights from our programme partners.
In early 2026, we will host a series of webinars, in which grant partners will delve into some of the themes emerging across the funded programmes of work and share their experience and insights.
We will also run information webinars on the open call opportunity once this is launched, to share more about what we are seeking to fund and answer potential applicant’s questions.
If you would like to be kept up-to-date with any or all of the above opportunities, please email Programme Development Lead, Holly, to be added to the mailing list – hbaine@raynefoundation.org.uk