Adult social care will struggle to continue to provide good services that meet rising demand without significant transformation. Scaling up promising models could improve outcomes for individuals – and result in savings for both adult social care and the NHS. These conclusions are published by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). Its paper, Total transformation of care and support explores the potential for scaling up some of the most promising examples of care and support services, using data from Birmingham City Council, to see what their impact would be on outcomes and costs.

The paper indicates potential improvements in outcomes for individuals, and potential savings of £6.6m to the adult social care budget, along with £1.4m to the NHS, per annum, if three promising models were fully scaled up in Birmingham.

The paper, which is the first in a new SCIE series on the Future of care, summarises the potential benefits of scaling up Shared Lives, Age UK’s Living Well scheme and Kent County Council’s hospital discharge project. The sector needs to have difficult, challenging and creative local conversations, which release ‘stuck’ systems and create space for moving forward together. The report includes a template for starting those conversations.

SCIE is to start a series of national and local discussions which re-imagine how we can lead good lives, in good places for people with support needs - building on well-evidenced innovative models from across the UK.

In the coming months, SCIE will consult local areas about what they want to see from the total transformation of social care. SCIE would like to hear from people who have examples of evidence-based models of care that they think need to be part of the total transformation of social care and support.