Case studies

Ronan Carolan set up HealthConex, which specialises in recruiting nurses and care staff to the UK and Ireland, and, having seen a wide variety of practice within the industry, he was driven by a desire to recruit ethically and see candidates as clients, not commodities.

Joint health and care teams have been established in the West Yorkshire district of Wakefield. The teams work from community hubs, helping keep people out of hospital. 

Harrogate Borough Council has set up a community health and wellbeing company, Brimhams Active, to run its gyms, leisure centres and community hubs. 

In Barnsley the hospital trust and council have worked together to create a diagnostic unit in the new retail and leisure centre, which has been developed as part of a £200 million regeneration of the town centre.

The Edge Café in Cambridge provides support to people recovering from substance misuse and those with mental health problems by running recovery groups and providing opportunities for volunteering.

An element of drug and alcohol recovery support has been run from a community library since 2019 in Newcastle.

Gateshead Council run their own in-house monitoring and response centre for all of their housing stock including general needs and specialist housing. This includes approximately 3,000 community alarms in people’s homes in the area – a traditional telecare offer.

Suffolk County Council launched Cassius, their county-wide digital care service in July 2021 delivered in partnership with Alcove and Rethink Partners. This was the culmination of several years of planning and research, the development of a digital care strategy and an extensive procurement process for a digital care partner (paused during Covid-19) that ran for over a year.

Bristol City Council’s employment, skills and learning service works proactively to ensure it adds value to the skills and employment system, including through its ‘Bristol One City’ partnership.

Central London Forward provides support, coordination and partnership working across councils in central London, leading on key programmes such as ‘Central London Works’. This case study examines the strengths, impact and challenges of the current skills and employment system, and what is needed to increase positive outcomes for local residents.