Case Study: Establishing Regional Care Cooperatives: Supporting the DfE’s Pathfinder Programme in Greater Manchester and the South East

Client: Department for Education

Date: April 2024 – June 2025

Challenges faced by the client:

The Department for Education (DfE) sought to address long-standing challenges in children’s social care, particularly around placement sufficiency, market shaping, and regional collaboration.

Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) bring together local authorities from across a geographic area to address challenges in children’s social care. In the last government’s policy paper: ‘Stable Homes Built on Love’, published in 2023 in response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the DfE first announced its intention to co-design two RCC pathfinders to support local authorities to create better homes for children in care and by solving complex local issues within children’s social care.

Two regions, Greater Manchester and the South East, were selected as pathfinders. Each faced the complex task of aligning multiple local authorities, health and justice partners, and existing regional structures to co-design and implement their RCCs.

Our support:

Mutual Ventures was commissioned by the DfE to support the two RCC pathfinders through every stage of their journey from inception to Go-Live. Our support included:

• Coaching and strategic guidance: We provided tailored coaching to project leads and senior stakeholders in both regions, helping them navigate the complexities of regional collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and organisational design. This included one-to-one coaching, facilitation of strategic planning sessions, and leadership mentoring to build confidence and clarity at key decision points.

• Subject matter expertise: Our team included specialists across commissioning, data and forecasting, legal structuring, youth justice, health integration, and governance. These experts worked directly with the pathfinders to resolve complex issues, such as selecting appropriate delivery vehicles, designing governance models, and developing funding proposals and business cases. Their input was focused on helping the pathfinders to solve complex and technical issues throughout their journey.

• Structured programme delivery: We supported the pathfinders through a six-phase journey to establish their RCCs:

  • Inception: Understanding the regional context, identifying key challenges, and securing early stakeholder buy-in.

  • Mobilisation: Establishing project teams, governance structures, and stakeholder engagement plans.

  • Co-design: Collaboratively developing the RCC’s vision, scope, services, and organisational structure with local authority leaders and partners.

  • Detailed design: Producing business plans, selecting delivery models, and developing funding proposals and legal agreements.

  • Implementation: Setting up the RCC infrastructure, recruiting staff, and preparing for operational delivery.

  • Go-Live: Launching the RCC and transitioning to full service delivery with ongoing support and evaluation mechanisms.

• Learning and knowledge sharing: We facilitated action learning sessions to capture and share live learning across the programme and developed national learning materials on forecasting, commissioning, and market shaping to support other regions considering RCCs.

Outcome achieved:

Both Greater Manchester and the South East successfully progressed through their journeys to establish their RCCs.

Greater Manchester opted for a hosted model within the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and successfully launched their RCC on the 1^st April 2025. The South East are planning to establish their RCC as an independent company limited by guarantee and are expecting to launch their RCC by the end of 2025.

Quote from client:

“Mutual Ventures’ help has been essential to us getting on our feet. We’ve had all sorts of support from Mutual Ventures including support around what entity we should be, legal support, and tax support. We have also had support in thinking about us as an organisation to answer questions like ‘what is our strategic intent’ as well as day to day support to get us to where we are now.” Lucy Butler, Director of the South East Regional Care Cooperative.

For more information on Regional Care Cooperatives and the learning materials produced as part of this programme please see the Mutual Ventures’ webpage on RCCs or contact Mutual Ventures’ Senior Consultant Luke Bevir luke.bevir@mutualventures.co.uk.