What a year it’s been for the Care Innovation Challenge! The 2025 Care Innovation Challenge concluded last week at the Birmingham Care Show where Team Making Space were crowned the 2025 Challenge winners with their Co-production game.
Each of our semi-finalists: Anna O’Gara– Carpe Care, David Grey– SleepWell, Dr Shelley James– Sleep Strategy Partnership, Molly Baldini– DentaBlue and Team Making Space– Co-Pro Game were given the opportunity to present their solutions at the Care Show Stand D13 and compete for votes from delegates. The stand attracted many visitors including Tom Surrey, Director of Adult Social Care Workforce & Policy and Simon Bottery, Senior Fellow of Social Care at The King’s Fund. Our semi-finalists greatly enjoyed presenting their innovations to everybody who visited the stand and each made priceless connections.
The Care Innovation Challenge is designed to bring innovation in social care to life inviting people to participate regardless of their background or level of expertise. Successful applicants are invited to an exciting weekend full of creativity, idea-generation and prototype trialling where their ideas will be nurtured by mentors who are sector experts and experts by lived experience. At the end of the weekend, the 5 teams with the highest quality ideas will be invited to the Care Show final and given £500, further mentoring and media exposure.
The Final was hosted by Professor Vic Rayner, OBE in the Business Theatre at the Care Show where it was a full crowd as Team Making Space was named as the 2025 Care Innovation Challenge winner. The ‘Making it Real’ Co-Production game is a creative co-production tool that brings the Making it Real framework to life – the game was created to show how co-production can spark real change across the social sector.
Team Making Space said, “We can’t wait to take the next step and bring the Making It Real G.A.M.E to the people and places where it’s needed most – making co-production practical, fun, playful, and powerful across care and support.”
It’s been a great year for the Care Innovation Challenge which has seen an incredible amount of innovation and solutions to the challenges faced in adult social care. Thank you to all our participants, sponsors and mentors for making this challenge possible.
Click here to view the Challenge Final photo album.
Registrations for the Care Innovation Challenge 2026 are now open! If you’d like to make a difference in the world of social care and you have an idea or solution, this is the challenge for you. Sign up today at https://careinnovationhub.org.uk/individual-application/