Our Transformation Plan
From humble beginnings in 1995, Lifeways has become one of the UK’s largest providers of support for people with complex needs, providing over 13 million hours of care for more than 4,000 people, every single year.
Over the past three decades, the fundamental beliefs that underpin what we do have remained the same: we put the person we support at the heart of our work and we do everything we can to help people with complex needs to lead independent and fulfilling lives.
Of course, what has changed since 1995 is how we deliver care and support.
The adult social care sector faces significant challenge. Demand is increasing, funding is not keeping pace, while attracting and retaining the people who are vital to delivering our support is becoming harder.
That’s why in August 2022 our then newly appointed CEO Andrea Kinkade launched an ambitious Transformation Plan to ensure Lifeways was able to face up to these challenges and provide the best possible care.
Backed up by over £10 million worth of investment, the plan focuses on:
1. Providing the best possible care and support
Above all else, we have a steadfast focus on positive outcomes for the people we support.
Since we implemented our plan, 43 of our registrations, when assessed by the regulator, either maintained Good or improved their regulatory ratings.
Our external regulatory compliance sits at 85% - up from 76% in 2022. We also know through the introduction of third-party inspections, completed by an award-winning healthcare company, that our likely regulatory compliance sits around 92%. There is still work to do, but we are making solid progress. . We work hard to do more to improve our standards month by month, year by year, and are continuously improving every facet of the organisation, none more so than the governance and quality oversight across Lifeways.
In Scotland, we operate 16 registrations, all of which are 100% compliant (up from 70% in 2022). Lifeways has been rated ‘Very Good’ by the Care Inspectorate Scotland across 10 of those registrations in the last 18 months and we are on the right trajectory to achieve the maximum rating of six (Outstanding) as we continue the transformation journey.
2. Recruiting, developing and retaining exceptional people
Finding and retaining good talent is always a challenge, and over the past few years it has only become harder across the sector.
However, we’re proud that since we began our transformation journey, we have been able to hire people based upon their values and enhanced our induction which has helped improve our retention rate by 23%.
We have also invested in training and assessment, rebalancing e-learning with more face-to-face instruction. We delivered more than 268,000 hours of training in 2024 alone – an increase of 12% on 2022.
Celebrating longevity and loyalty to Lifeways, we are proud that our capable staff have received more than 700 long-term service awards in the past year.
3. Using technology to improve lives
We want to make the best use of technology possible so we can free up our staff to focus on the things that matter most – proving the best possible care and support.
Since 2022 we have invested £700K on automating administrative tasks and joining up data and systems, to streamline how we work and give time back to our staff so they can focus on what’s important.
For example, in 2022 we partnered with Radar, a digital e-compliance platform. Radar provides us with the ability to record all risk-related events under one universal system, removing reliance on the paper-based forms that are still used by many other providers in the social care industry. This allows better trend analysis, improved auditing systems and enhanced governance and oversight, this has played a significant part in the improved compliance and strengthened our internal ISO9001 quality management system.
We have also introduced an e-Rota system (Deputy) to help streamline rota management, improve colleague wellbeing and engagement and ensure we are providing safe, effective and consistent care and support to the 4000 people we support. This system allows better control and oversight of the hours we are delivering, and the support people are receiving, this is a key driver for quality.
Finally, we are now 80% through the implementation of eCare (Nourish). This digital platform allows teams and the people we support to document evidence of the care and support they receive. We are able to document support as it is delivered and demonstrate that we are enabling people to live the life they choose. This intuitive system sends alerts and notifications to teams to ensure they complete and document support tasks accurately and promptly. The removal of paper-driven processes frees up time and resource so we can focus on providing person-centred care and support.
4. Becoming an employer of choice
Our Transformation Plan includes a commitment to become one of the leading employers in the sector by 2026. To get there, we have made a significant investment in our teams – improving their pay, reward, and development programmes. As a result of this, the proportion of our workforce that would recommend Lifeways as a good place to work has increased to 73%, from 59% in 2022.
Despite the changes we’ve made since we began implementing our Transformation Plan, we know the job isn’t done yet. We can and will do more to become the best possible provider of care and support in the UK, learning from the past and building on the work we have done so far.