MANAGEMENT


Reducing the care navigation burden for families


Clear communication, continuity and trusted relationships can help providers ease the strain of accessing and coordinating care, writes Gerard Crofton-Martin.


High-quality social care transforms lives, enabling people to live with greater independence, dignity and purpose. Social care done well reduces pressure on the NHS, strengthens community ties, and helps people thrive. Yet SCIE’s latest research, ‘How care inequities shape social care experiences’, shows that for many people the greatest challenge is not only receiving care, but understanding how to access it, coordinate it and sustain it over time. For many the system feels ‘complex and opaque’, with uncertainty about eligibility, funding, who is responsible for different parts of care and where to turn for help. This research presents a rare, in-depth


qualitative study of how people drawing on care and support, and unpaid carers, experience inequities in social care in England. Commissioned by SCIE and conducted by Thinks Insight & Strategy, it builds on SCIE’s wider work on care


14 THE CARE HOME INDUSTRY HANDBOOK 2027


equity, including the Care Equity Evidence Hub. While the research looked across adult social care, there are clear lessons for care providers. Our research found that people frequently shoulder what might best be described as a ‘navigation burden’. They repeatedly explain their circumstances, chase referrals, coordinate different organisations, interpret conflicting information and advocate for themselves or relatives, often at moments of crisis. Those with the greatest need are frequently those least equipped to carry this burden because of disability, ill health, financial pressures, language barriers, limited informal support or low confidence in navigating public services.


Importantly, participants in the research study


rarely spoke about ‘inequity’ as an abstract concept. Instead, they described experiences of confusion, uncertainty, being passed between services, feeling dismissed, talked down to or worn


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