by Sophie Coles

Often, workforces are exhausted by talk of change that isn’t effectively embedded. Left unchecked,  ‘change fatigue’ leads to burn out, and burned out employees won’t contribute positively to your organisation. Change fatigue can be described as passive resignation. It is this passive resignation that can make change fatigue far more of problem than the challenge of “resistance to change” that many leaders talk about.

The exhaustion that comes with change fatigue leads to a general sense of apathy towards change of any kind. When apathy sets in, you are likely to have observed the subsequent loss of productivity, innovation, and creativity of the people affected.

Throughout my working career in the NHS and social work services, the lines I have commonly heard are frequently variations on, “here we go again” or, “we tried this five/ten years ago and it didn’t work”, “what’s the point?” or “this is just another gimmick that won’t work”.

Over the last fifteen years, I have met countless Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) and staff who have had plenty of dynamic ideas on how to improve social care delivery but who have been unsure where or how to begin implementing them, or feel as though they are not heard or not given the opportunity (or time!) to develop their ideas.

Reasons for project failure

I have spoken recently at conferences with AHPs who told me that work around Single Handed Care had been started some time ago within their organisations, but faded out when a key staff member left.  Single points of failure are often individual practitioners within organisations.  When things are going well, it is easy to overlook the potential for project failure.

Within some organisations, there may also be a general perception that everyone can deliver projects, suggesting that everyone has the skills and experience to be a project manager.  This should never be assumed. Without careful assessment of these ‘accidental’ project managers, clinicians may be being asked to perform a role that they are neither suited to, nor trained for.

Social Care is in crisis nationally

Professor Martin Green (OBE), Care England’s Chief Executive, stated in a recent interview with Sky News that, not only are there a large number of people remaining in hospital due to the lack of available social care who are not medically required to be there, but there are significant numbers of people awaiting provisioning of a care package in the community, who are likely to end up as preventable admissions to hospital, compounding the problem in the NHS.

We know that things cannot continue as they are:

  • The devastating impact of ambulance delays, due to the percentage of patients who have no criteria to reside because of a lack of home care availability, grows daily.
  • People over the age of 85 are the fastest growing demographic group in the UK
  • According to Freedom of Information requests from 96 Councils in England, unresourced community care hours across England rose by 281% in just eight months last year
  • The recent ADASS survey (August 2022) highlights that 600 people a day are joining the Adult Social Care waiting lists and currently 400,000 people are awaiting assessment across England.
Integration is the only way forward for sustainable home care delivery

C.Co’s Maximising Proportionate Care (MPC) programme can help you.  By embedding a culture of resilience and continuity through MPC, we believe this approach is totally sustainable.

By implementing our MPC approach, for every £1 spent with C.Co, over £5 is returned to your organisation.  This equates to over 250 hours of care being released for every £1,000 spent with us.

C.Co brings something different to the table to ensure effective delivery. We pride ourselves on outcome aligned integration and we take into account the challenges every step of the way, including on strategy and leadership, funding, stakeholders and operational policies and procedures.

C.Co brings people together across communities and organisations using conversations and analysis to gather deep insights to solve complex problems. Our approach is practical and focused on delivering change at pace.  We develop long-lasting and meaningful partnerships with our clients, injecting both capacity and capability to support delivery of change programmes.  We pride ourselves on delivering positive change, in a value-driven, collaborative and evidence-based way.

Get in touch today if you would like to explore how we can support you to effect sustainable change.