When Care Communities Are Always Changing, How Do We Ever Reach Maturity? A Reflection by Shrien Dewani

By: Shrien Dewani 

For nearly three decades in social care, one truth has become increasingly clear to me: a care home community is a living organism, constantly reshaping itself around the needs, vulnerabilities, and relationships of the people within it. Unlike most places we call “community,” ours are defined by continual change. People arrive at the most fragile moments of their lives. They often stay for a shorter time than ever before, reflecting how and when people now enter care. 

And those who support them, our teams, face financial, emotional and professional pressures that test even the strongest cultures. 

So, when we talk about a care community reaching a state of “maturity”, what do we mean? And is it even possible in a sector defined by movement, loss, and renewal? 

What Maturity in a Care Community Really Looks Like 

Maturity is not about stability in the traditional sense. It is not about long lengths of stay or unchanging staff teams. Maturity in a care community is about the consistency of experience, the embedding of ways of being, caring, and relating, even when the people themselves are constantly changing. 

Excellent care emerges when: 

• Leadership is steady and values-led 

• The environment supports wellbeing and agency 

• Staff training is ongoing, practical, and emotionally intelligent 

• Multidisciplinary partners are present, responsive, and respectful 

• Relationships, between residents, staff, families, and professionals, are nurtured with intention 

These elements form the cultural backbone that allows a community to hold steady even as everything around it moves. 

The Reality: Our Communities Are Becoming More Fragile 

But today’s sector makes this harder than ever. 

Residents are entering care later in life, often on discharge pathways or after periods of crisis. Their frailty is greater. Their needs are more complex. Their time with us is often shorter. This naturally reduces the opportunity for relationships to deepen and for community identity to form. 

At the same time, staff turnover remains one of the most significant pressure points in the sector. Chronic underfunding means care teams, skilled, committed people, are still among the lowest-paid professionals in society. And as the NHS becomes increasingly stretched, our attached professionals, GPs, district nurses, therapists, and specialists have less time to support meaningful connection.  

A community in constant motion is a community that must rebuild itself repeatedly. 

Why This Makes Leadership More Challenging and More Important 

To lead a care community today requires more than operational competence. It demands a form of moral and human leadership that recognises how fragile a care culture can be, and how deliberately it must be nurtured. 

Because in the face of such fluidity, culture doesn’t “embed itself.” 

It must be intentionally built. 

Daily. 

Relationally. 

With purpose. 

This is why leaders often feel they are steering a village that re-forms every week, because in many ways, they are. 

The Path to Maturity in a World of Constant Change 

The solution is not to chase a static ideal of maturity. 

The solution is to invest in the conditions that allow maturity to be recreated again: 

• Invest in training, not just technical training, but relational, reflective, trauma-informed development that helps staff understand themselves and others. 

• Invest in time to connect, handovers, shared moments, supervision that is genuinely supportive, and multidisciplinary presence that builds trust. 

• Invest in relationships, between residents, staff, families, professionals and wider stakeholders. No culture grows without connection. 

• Invest in psychological safety, the permission to speak openly, challenge respectfully, and learn continuously. 

• Invest in leaders, developing them to be calm, ethical, generous with their presence, and courageous in how they make decisions. 

These are the investments that allow a community to regenerate its maturity, even as its members change. 

Because Excellent Care Is Always a Cultural Achievement 

When we get this right, something beautiful happens: 

even in the face of loss, transition and constant movement, the community feels grounded. 

People feel held. 

Staff feel proud. 

Families feel reassured. 

Professionals feel part of something meaningful. 

And the experience, for the people who live there and the people who work there, becomes one of dignity, value and purpose. 

In a world of shifting variables, maturity is not a destination. It is a discipline. 

A daily act of leadership. 

A collective commitment. 

A culture built not once, but continuously. 

And that, perhaps, is what makes care communities some of the most remarkable places of all.