Navigating, Challenging and Shaping the Health and Social Care Landscape

By Fiona Kenny | Head of Case Management & Rehab and Registered Nurse

We’re one month in to the year already and as I look further ahead into 2025, there is no denying that for those of us working within the health and social care sector and for the people we support, the landscape is challenging. When you provide a service within this sector however it should never be a deterrent to doing the right thing and changing the landscape in some way. In my first article, I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight the support and developments within case management and at Bush & Co that will make sure we’re navigating, challenging and shaping the health and social care landscape.

Following the Lord Darzi report, released late in 2024, highlighting the issues within the NHS, we now wait to review the Governments’ 10 year plan to ‘fix the NHS’ which will be published in May 2025. It is important that within our responsibilities of providing case management we are aware of the issues and what initiatives may be launched to offer resolution to the current status quo. We will be keeping abreast of these, and sharing information because I can envisage a direct impact on how we manage our clients’ rehabilitation programmes and the resolutions offer up may demand that we become even more innovative when considering recommendations and access to rehabilitation.

Our case managers and my team at Bush & Co have always been agile in adapting to change. Our clients’ needs can change weekly and the ability to look at a situation, navigate the safest, most efficient and pragmatic way through is a skill we look for in our people.

This year the role of a case manager in particular will evolve too and it’s certainly a developing profession found in a variety of clinical settings. As we move through 2025 this will see us move into a landscape whereby case management takes its first steps to becoming a profession in its own right.

‘Case Manager’ is not a protected title, unlike most other professional areas of health and social care practice and there is currently no specific educational qualification route into Case Management; it seems to be a profession that practitioners ‘fall’ into or just find by chance, resulting in them then working in an unregulated role. The development of the Institute of Case Management (IRCM) is the first step to regulating the profession and then ensuring that standards are maintained, governance is adhered to and professional development is tailored to the role requirements.

The establishment of the IRCM will give reassurance to instructing parties that health care professionals working as case managers have reached a recognised level of proficiency within the field, have completed accredited CPD that supports their role and are committed to their role as Registered Case Manager. There is an expectation that all case managers will complete the competency framework needed to be added to the IRCM register and we will be following this rigorously across Bush & Co; supporting our Associate Case Managers to prepare for and complete the registration process. We’ll also be further enhancing our reassurances to the legal sector by aligning our in-house mentorship and training programme to make this process as seamless as possible, and one that strives to highlight the skills and experience of our case managers.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the year ahead. Is it a year of innovating and adapting for you or a wait and watch as we learn more about the changing landscape of health and social care?