On the 8th October 2026 the Digital Excellence in Care report was launched at the Birmingham Care Show. This is an important report and an important moment for adult social care. For the first time, there is a clear definition of what “good” looks like and a clear direction of travel for the development of digital technology in adult social care.
There is a huge amount of activity in the digital technology sphere in adult social care, as there is across the whole economy. It can often feel that there is more heat than light with technology companies springing up all the time offering a wide range of products. It can sometimes feel overwhelming for leaders to know where to start or how to measure where they currently are against where they want to be. This report changes that and puts care providers in the driving seat. The report has been written specifically for working age adult services, where there is a strong track record of collaboration, but a lot of its content is also applicable to other client group providers, for example those supporting older people. The report has been written by care providers and their representative organisations, Care England and VODG, together with the Digital Care Hub and Nourish and Sona, two of the leading technology providers. It has also involved very extensive consultation with the Local Government Association, CQC, people who use services and families.
There are huge opportunities to use digital technology to improve the quality of life of people being supported and to improve the efficiency of provider organisations that are often operating in challenging financial circumstances. For example, we could link video to daily support records and family feedback to assess how well individuals are being supported to use their preferred communication method. We could also link the rota system to the customer management system and the finance system so that changes to the support needs of an individual can be automatically communicated to the funding authority with appropriate changes made to invoicing.
The digital excellence report consists of eight domains that cover the main areas affecting a working age adult care provider in England and its stakeholders: People, Finance, Quality & Improvement, Estates, People being Supported, Families, Commissioners and Regulatory Assurance. Within the eight domains, twenty-five key requirements have been identified which are seen as the top priorities for care providers. Here are three examples:
- People being Supported: digital information should be as accessible as possible.
- Finance: reconciliation of commissioned hours versus delivered hours versus billed hours.
- Quality and Improvement: real time risk and incident monitoring.
As well as the domains and key requirements, the report includes a “data maturity model”. This is a four level model from very basic through to highly sophisticated digital systems with clear definitions of each so that care providers can self-assess to see how they compare to the model. They can then put in place an action plan to improve. The four levels of the model are: Siloed, Connected, Optimised and Actualised.
The Digital Excellence in Care report can be downloaded from the Care England website (search White Paper library). If you have any questions you would like to discuss, please contact Peter Kinsey, Chair of Iris Care Group, who chaired the working group that produced the report at peter.kinsey@iriscaregroup.co.uk.