The Rayne Foundation believes – and evidence shows[1] - that providing better career and professional development opportunities for people working in care will result in better care for those who need it most.  The Foundation has funded organisations supporting care for people in later life since its founding in 1962 and for many years, improved quality of life for older people and their carers has been an area of special interest.  

The Foundation is now developing the proactive funding programme Better Careers for Better Care, focused on workforce development within social care for people in later life. This is a new focus and approach for the Foundation and follows several years exploring and testing how the Foundation’s resources could be used to have the greatest positive impact on the quality of life for older people and their carers. Learn more about our journey, learning and rationale here and here.

The Foundation has earmarked £2 million to Better Careers for Better Care. Our funding is available to organisations working in England in the first instance, acknowledging that each national health and care context is distinct. We hope to fund programmes in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the future. Our initial aim is to achieve a geographical spread across England with grants made in both urban and rural settings, guided by the applications received.

Following an open call for Expressions of Interest, we are now working alongside shortlisted organisations to develop ambitious proposals for funding and collaboration with the potential to transform career and development opportunities for care workers working with people in later life. You can read more from the Programme Manager about the funding call here and from our Head of Grants on our learning so far here. Further information on funded projects will follow later in the year. 

On this webpage:

• Funding priorities
• Grant-making process
• What we will fund
• The funding relationship

Funding priorities

Through our discussions with leaders in the social care sector, we identified the following areas of work that we believe could have a transformative impact for care workers and the people they work with:

1. Recognising, acknowledging, and championing the value and skills of care workers.
2. Sustainable recruitment into the social care workforce.
3. Design and delivery of career progression opportunities for staff across the social care workforce, and the support needed to access them.
4. Development of social care leaders.
5. Empowering and enabling social care leaders to contribute to strategy and policy development in health and social care.
6. Co-production at the local, regional and/or national level of career development opportunities and/or workforce development plans.
7. Establishing inclusive, learning cultures within care in later life, and evidencing the positive impact on both the workforce and the quality of care for older people.
8. Connecting care provision for people in later life with the wider community to support recruitment and retention within the social care workforce.

Through an Expression of Interest form, we asked applicants to demonstrate that they are:

1. listening to and/or committed to involving the voice of care workers in their plans to improve staff development opportunities;
2. collaborating actively with the wider care landscape in their area and building on any existing, related work;
3. working to build equity, diversity and inclusion as central tenets within workforce development and career progression plans;
4. contributing funding and/or significant in-kind support to the initiative to show their commitment (relative to the capacity of the applicant organisations); and
5. thinking about opportunities for wider application and dissemination of the results of their work.

The Rayne Foundation acknowledges that:

• The social care sector remains under huge pressure due to long-standing staffing issues.
• The impact of these initiatives will be limited without funding and pay reform; that said, pay on its own will not address all the challenges.
• There is no one single solution to the many and varied workforce challenges within adult social care, and action is needed at multiple levels to contribute to change at a systems level.

Grant-making process

The grant-making process is designed using the Foundation's working values as a framework, and aims to be trusting, collaborative, creative and rigorous.

In recognition of the time and energy it takes to apply for funding, we asked for applicants to submit an Expression of Interest. The funding call was open between November 2023 and January 2024.  We are now working alongside shortlisted applicants to develop full applications to go to the Board for decision over the course of 2024. 

Acknowledging the expertise and experience that exists within the social care sector, an Assessment Panel is supporting the grant-making process, comprising four External Advisors, two Trustees and one staff member. The External Advisors bring lived and learned experience of the social care sector, and professional expertise.

The grant-making process comprises following steps:

Step	Activity	When
1	Open call for Expressions of Interest	13 Nov 2023 – 10 Jan 2024
2	Expressions of Interest longlisted. Longlisted EOIs reviewed and scored by Assessment Panel (representing 70% of final score)	10-31 Jan 2024
3	Interview longlisted orgs/partnerships (representing 30% of final score) by sub-section of Assessment Panel	22-31 Jan 2024
4	Finalise shortlist of proposals to develop to full application and feedback to unsuccessful applicants	By 14 Feb 2024
5	Collaborative development of full applications – shortlisted organisations and staff team, with input from Assessment Panel as helpful	Feb 2024 onward
6	Applications taken to Board for decision	June 2024 onward

 

Once the grants have been awarded, the Programme Development Lead will continue to work alongside the funded organisations to ensure progress and learning is captured and shared. An evaluation partner is also supporting the shortlisted organisations to track impact and draw out learning.

What we will fund

The Foundation recognises that to have an impact at a systems level, many different organisations need to be engaged. We also recognise that our funding alone cannot enable transformation of career and development opportunities for care workers in adult social care. For these reasons, we prioritised the following types of bids in our longlisting and shortlisting process:

• Partnership bids bringing together organisations with different perspectives, experiences and skill-sets. 
• Proposals that are part of a broader change and transformation agenda focused on the social care workforce.
• Proposals that address identified barriers to workforce development with creativity and innovation, contributing to the evidence base for best practice.  
• Proposals that take a strengths-based approach and unlock people’s potential.
• Proposals that acknowledge and value the diversity of the care workforce, as well as people in later life drawing on care, and centre equity and inclusion in their approaches to workforce development.
• Proposals between 1 and 3 years, up to the total value of £300,000 depending on the scale of ambition and the partnerships involved.

Our first grant, made in summer 2023, is to the North Central London (NCL) Councils in support of their Social Care Workforce Programme, which includes workstreams focused on recruitment, progression and skills development, and wellbeing. The Foundation has funded two elements of the broader programme. The first is a Leadership and Integration programme to develop social care leaders with the confidence, skills, and relationships to participate in the Integrated Care Board. The Foundation hopes that this will enable and empower the voice of social care within strategic, decision-making spaces. The second is contributing to the development of a co-designed Apprenticeship Programme. The Foundation’s funding will support providers to release their staff to participate in apprenticeship programmes by funding the organisational costs of hosting apprenticeships. Providers had identified this as a barrier to taking up existing apprenticeship opportunities and the Foundation’s funding will test this theory.  

Our exclusion criteria for our responsive grant programmes did not apply on this occasion. 

The funding relationship

Through Better Careers for Better Care, the Foundation seeks to learn more about innovative approaches to entrenched challenges within the social care workforce. This learning will inform future funding aimed at improving the quality of life for carers and people in later life.

For those applicants that receive a grant, the funding relationship will be one of collaborative partnership and open communication. The Foundation and partner organisations will ensure regular opportunities exist to share progress, learning and challenges across the funded projects and the Better Careers for Better Care programme of funding. We will also ensure that this learning is shared more widely, with others working in the social care sector and philanthropy. 

The Foundation has commissioned an external evaluator of the Better Careers for Better Care funding programme. Bean Research has created an impact framework for the funding programme and key outcomes that will help us to understand the impact of funded projects.  Partner organisations will work with the evaluators to capture learning throughout the course of the grant.

What we will expect from partner organisations:

• To share strategic thinking, insights and learning with us throughout the course of the grant, as is possible and appropriate.
• To work with the evaluators to capture progress and learning.
• To participate in networks and other opportunities to share learning and develop practice, including some events facilitated by the Foundation.

What partner organisations can expect from us:

• A flexible and collaborative approach to grant-making and evaluation, in which we are open to challenge and change.
• Creativity in where our funding can be directed to facilitate transformative change.
• Commitment to building a shared understanding with funded partner organisations of what success looks like which is both aspirational and realistic.
• Support via our evaluation partner Bean Research to capture and evidence impact in a way that enables organisations to build a case for sustainable investment.
• Participation in networks and events organised by partner and other relevant organisations to share learning and develop best practice.
• Using our networks and influence to support positive change within adult social care.
• Use of our meeting room facilities in central London.

 

[1]  Skills for Care Rapid Evidence Assessment: adult social care and factors associated with productivity and work performance, published 2017; 

Towers A, Smith N, Allan S, Vadean F, Collins G, Rand S, et al. Care home residents' quality of life and its association with CQC ratings and workforce issues: the MiCareHQ mixed-methods study. Health Serv Deliv Res 2021;9(19)