Care Provider Alliance Newsletter - Sept 2025
Welcome to the Care Provider Alliance newsletter (previously known as the CPA ICS learning network bulletin)
With the Government’s 10‑Year Health Plan outlining the shift toward Neighbourhood Health Services the social care is more vital than ever. This year has already seen significant activity across Government that affects the social care sector.
As an alliance, we are at the heart of conversations with the Government on the impact and challenges of these changes, advocating for the right outcomes for people who use services, the staff supporting them, and for providers offering care and support services.
In this update, we highlight the many areas we have been working in over the past few months to support the sector, as well as details of forthcoming webinars, and our new Community of Practices.
CPA workstreams
This year we are focussing our activities in seven key areas. Recent activities include:
Employment Rights Bill (ERB) and Fair Pay Agreement (FPA)
We have been meeting regularly with the FPA Team at DHSC, and are active participants in the DHSC’s FPA Working Group. This is helping to shape how this legislation might work and how the FPA, in particular, can be delivered in the sector. Read our recent briefing update of our work in this area here.
To link stakeholders and share knowledge, we have created a dedicated Fair Pay Agreement Community of Practice. As the Government engages the sector in a range of consultations over the next few months, this will be a great opportunity to share ideas and resources.
Fair Pay Agreement Community of Practice
Neighbourhood Health services
The Ten-Year NHS Plan announced by the Government in July has set out ambitious plans for neighbourhood health services. ICBs have been asked to submit applications for up to 42 sites to trial and showcase the first tranche of these. We expect these sites to be announced in September.
Our work with DHSC focuses on supporting social care providers to get involved in co-producing local neighbourhood plans, and we are working on a toolkit for providers to support co-production.
We plan to launch this in October together with a webinar explaining the toolkit and showcasing examples of good co-production. In the meantime, for information and resources in this area, please join our Neighbourhood Health Community of Practice.
Neighbourhood Health Community of Practice
Mental health and learning disabilities
The Right Care, Right Person guidance includes good examples of neighbourhood mental health services already in place. As part of our series of webinars we will focus on awareness raising and looking at good practice examples of neighbourhood mental health and crisis support.
In addition, we have established a dedicated Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Community of Practice, which includes information, guidance and good practice examples of coordinated Mental Health and Learning Disability Support.
Mental Health & Learning Disabilities Community of Practice
In addition, we are continuing our work with the DHSC on vaccinations, business continuity and pandemic preparedness.
Other activities
CQC Self-Assessment Framework: We are working with the CQC on reshaping the Quality Statements, reducing the duplication and developing sector-based guidance on what good looks like. We are currently agreeing the timescales for this with the CQC and will update you when they are confirmed.
Young People in Social Care: In partnership with Skills for Care, we are working on a project looking at examples and characteristics of providers who have been successful in attracting and retaining young people into social care.
Honours Nominations: We continue to support the DHSC to encourage more honours nominations from the sector. Watch the recording and find resources from the joint webinar we held in May with DHSC, CQC, and TLAP here. We will run a follow-up webinar soon.
Webinar: An update on the Oliver McGowan Code of Practice for registered care providers
Monday 15 September, 13:00 - 14:00, 2025
Delivered in partnership with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), this webinar provides an opportunity to use the commencement of the Code to ensure guidance and information is updated, and that registered care providers understand how the CQC is planning to regulate in relation to this requirement in an effective and consistent way.
Register for: An update on the Oliver McGowan Code of Practice for registered care providers webinar
CPA webinars
From learning from early adopters of the new health and social care workforce plans and looking at ICSs can tackle health and care inequalities for people with learning disabilities and autistic people to our Unlocking Best Practices: Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) series, we have run a number of webinars.
Recordings, presentations, and resources from all our past events can be found on the events section of our website.
Welcome to our new Chair
In line with our terms of reference, our Chair rotates annually across each of our ten association members.
At the beginning of September we were delighted to welcome Ewan King, CEO of Shared Lives Plus, as our Chair for the next 12 months.
Ewan says: “It is a privilege to take the role of Chair of the Care Provider Alliance. The social care sector continues to face immense challenges and I’m committed to ensuring that the voices of all care and support providers are heard loud and clear."
Our sincere thanks to our outgoing Chair, Professor Vic Rayner OBE, CEO of the National Care Forum, for her leadership and dedication to the role over the past 12 months.
Vic says: “The pace of change in this last year has been phenomenal, and it has been really important to work collaboratively and in partnership across the CPA."
Next Steps
There has already been a significant push for providers to take on delegated health tasks; they will be a key part of neighbourhood health. However, as providers are aware, there are many issues relating to registration, governance and insurance.
In the coming months, we will be conducting focused work with insurance companies to ensure providers have comprehensive insurance for these tasks.
With the Autumn budget due soon, and winter approaching, we suspect the months ahead will be even more challenging for the sector; as an alliance, we are committed to working to develop, deliver and sustain a care and support system which enables people to live the best lives they can.
Thank you for your continued support.