Ashton-Gray Consulting Ltd

Ashton-Gray Consulting Ltd provides business support to the care and community sectors. An example of the challenge before us was outlined in May 2021, when SCIE published “Prevention in social care”, which reminded us that “despite continuing policy expectations that preventative care will deliver cost savings to adult social care and wider systems, formal evidence is neither extensive nor robust.” We can’t do the evaluations that never happened and we can’t wait for new evaluations to look back. We have to trust our experience and knowledge and we must create engaging and thoughtful arguments, which we will ‘prove’ in time, or at the worst, learn from. As an accountant, I am all too aware that change will require money. In 2021/22, the sector spent £27bn and this is committed, predominantly, in terms of staffing costs and service contracts. It’s at this point that we may need to engage differently with partners, to take the wider role that 152 CASSRs already have – that of anchor institutions and to view our role in our communities slightly differently.