In March 2024, ADSS Cymru published the ADSS Cymru Feasibility Report: Creating a National Franchise / Cooperative Model of Domiciliary Care for Wales.
The project was born from the need to explore a radical alternative approach to domiciliary care, which is in crisis. Currently, Wales is missing approximately 5,000 domiciliary care workers. This equares to more than 4 million care hours that are not delivered yearly.
This report proposes a new model to directly address issues in recruitment, "back-office" support, and consistent standards.
The report is available to download here.
Background to the Study
Since Autumn 2022, ADSS Cymru worked with social care leaders and other key stakeholders to co-create a possible new model for domiciliary care. We sought views of providers, care workers, service users and their carers to explore whether the new model could work in practice.
Findings
The report proposes the creation of a Social Franchise: a business model that blends traditional franchising principles with a commitment to broader social goals.
In the model, a national body (the franchisor) will license approaches to delivering business functions to domiciliary care providers (the franchisees). This approach could significantly reduce social care costs, primarily through system simplification and aggregration.
Cooperative action will also enable the franchises to deploy technology in a way that would be almost impossible for small businesses acting along. This would release money that can be recycled into increased wages for domicilary care workers, helping to tackl the recruitment and retention challenges in the sector.
You can find out more about the research and the proposed model in the full report.
Next steps
ADSS Cymru has shared its findings with Welsh Government and is now considering how this piece of valuable work can be developed further in Wales.