Insights

Why a technology everyone agrees with is still taking so long to arrive in care. I have been in a lot of rooms about care technology over the last six years and I cannot remember a single person arguing against it. Directors of adult social care want it, housing associations want it, the NHS wants it, and families, once they understand what it does, want it very much. Ministers announce it with enthusiasm every eighteen months or so. The technology works, the evidence exists,

I have started a Substack. I appreciate that in 2026 this is roughly as surprising as Trump announcing another invasion of a country with oil reserves, but bear with me, because the reasons are better than the announcement. For thirty years I have run businesses, fixed businesses and occasionally watched businesses do things nobody could have imagined they’d do. I have been a graduate buyer at Sainsbury’s, which taught me that a supply chain was little more than a fight for p

Every business eventually needs an honest conversation with itself about what it actually is. Not what it says on the website, and not what it drifted into during a busy few years, but what it is genuinely good at and who it is genuinely for. We have just had that conversation at Creating Better, and this article sets out where it landed and why. The short version is that Creating Better is returning to its roots as a strategic business advisory, working with owners, boards a

Part 10 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. Back to where we started The very first article in this series made one simple claim, that if success is not defined before go-live, it cannot be measured after it. Nine steps later, this is the moment that claim pays off. The baseline was taken, the measures were agreed, and a method for putting social value into pounds was chosen before anyone ordered a single device. Everyth

Part 9 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. From the report to the table Last time we followed the data out of the home and into the reports, the trends and early warnings that let a service catch trouble before it turns into a crisis. That work matters, but a report only ever does half the job. The other half happens in a room somewhere, around a table where people with budgets and responsibilities decide what to do next

Part 8 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. The same data, a different job The last two articles lived in the moment after something had gone wrong. An alarm was raised, someone at the Alarm Receiving Centre answered it, and the right help was sent, climbing the escalation ladder no higher than the situation needed. That is reactive care done well, and it matters enormously, but it shares one limitation with even the best

Part 7 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. The last article in this series ended inside the Alarm Receiving Centre, with a call answered, a person spoken to and a situation assessed against a care plan that the operator actually had in front of them. This one is about what happens in the minutes that follow, because choosing the response is where a technology enabled care service either proves its worth or quietly squand

Part 6 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. The moment the whole pathway was built for Five steps in, and everything so far has been preparation. The organisation planned and set its baseline, the place was mapped, the person was listened to at the kitchen table, the connections were built, and the data began to speak in alerts, trends and reports. All of it, every workshop and wiring diagram and procurement decision, has

Somewhere in Britain this morning, a woman in her eighties got up four times in the night. Her kitchen kettle has not boiled since yesterday lunchtime. Her movement around the house has been slowing for three weeks. In a month she will be in A&E after a fall, and a hospital discharge team will begin an assessment that captures none of it. That gap, between what is happening in someone's life and what any professional can see, is where the social care crisis actually lives. An

Part 5 of 10 in our TEC Pathways series, following the journey from first plan to proven outcomes. The plumbing was never the point Four steps in, the pathway has a plan, a map, a person and a connection. The organisation knows what success is worth, the place has shown where the need and the strengths are, a household has told the service what a good day looks like, and the invisible plumbing now carries every signal reliably out of the house. Which means the service is now