About Us
Home and Future is the South East Regional Care Cooperative, a not-for-profit social enterprise funded by local authorities across the region.
Our Team
Led by experienced leaders and a diverse board Home and Future brings together decades of expertise to drive positive change in children's care
Matt Dunkley
Board Chair
Matt grew up in a family who fostered, which led to a lifelong commitment to children in care. He worked for 40 years in services for children in England, Australia and the United States.
He began his career in the Inner London Education Authority and London Borough of Greenwich, and went on to be a Director of Children’s Services for 18 years at East Sussex, Norfolk and Kent County Councils. Personal highlights included being the first ever statutory DCS in East Sussex, taking Norfolk out of intervention and Kent to Outstanding, just as he retired.
Matt is a Past President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, and a Harkness Fellow in Public Policy. Since retirement from full time work, he has supported local authorities on improvement journeys as a DfE Commissioner for Social Care, and Chairs the National Consortium for Examination Results (NCER). He spends his free time travelling, watching sport and old punk bands from his youth re-form.
Lucy Butler
Chief Executive
Lucy Butler is an experienced Director of Children’s Services with over 25 years’ experience working in the adult and children social services sector. She began her career working with people with learning disabilities and mental heath needs. She worked as an Assistant Director in Hampshire before moving to Oxfordshire where she worked for adults and then as Director of Children's Services until April 2020. In her next 4 years she led Children's Services in West Sussex taking them from Inadequate to Requires Improvement with Good Features. As a result of the confidence that was in restored in Children’s Services under her stewardship, the plan to transfer those services to a Children’s Trust was reversed.
As CEO for Home and Future, Lucy is applying her skills and experience in leading transformation to help the region build a new effective partnership. She is also the Chair of the Staff College, an organisation promoting strong leadership in the sector. She is passionate about making sure we live in a society where all our children thrive. Lucy is a bit of a culture vulture and spends her spare time at the theatre, reading or exploring new music.
Overview
Collaborate
We create and maintain regional collaborations which provide better homes for vulnerable children, helping them achieve the life outcomes they want.
Enable
We bring together and enable those whose expertise, passion and belief drives innovation to meet the needs of children and young people – placing their voices and aspirations at the heart of everything we do.
Strengthen
Using a collaborative and data-informed approach, we strengthen the workforce, commission high quality services, and ensure support is responsive to local needs and future demand.
EMPOWER YOUTH VOICES
Establishing a Youth Ambassadors Programme, giving care-experienced young people a platform to lead and influence regional initiatives.
What we aim to acheive
For Children and Young People:
The needs of children and young people are known, and they live in local, supportive and compassionate homes that allow them to thrive.
For Local Authorities:
Local authorities benefit from collaborative, sustainable solutions that deliver value for money while improving the market through working better in partnership.
For the Market:
The market is improved by data-analysis, innovation, and sharing our ambition to provide consistently high-quality, loving homes. These are delivered locally through a highly skilled workforce, within a supportive culture.
Our Belief
We believe that every child deserves a local, loving home, and that by working together we can build a future where every voice is heard and all are supported to thrive.
National Context
In 2022, both the Independent Review and the Competition and Market Authority’s market study exposed several challenges within the children’s social care system.
Local authorities (LAs) struggle to forecast and plan for future needs due to their small size and significant year-on-year variations, especially of children with complex needs. LAs lack the buying power and capacity to shape the market for the long-term or invest in their own care provision. This results in a shortage of suitable placements and decisions based on availability rather than the best match for the child, leading to poor care experiences for many children.
To curb these challenges, the government’s response ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ proposed a host of recommended solutions, including introducing a new Regional Care Cooperative (RCC) model to improve outcomes across residential care, fostering, and secure care.
South East
- Bracknell Forest
- Brighton and Hove
- Buckinghamshire
- Department for Education
- East Sussex
- Isle of Wight
- Medway
- Milton Keynes
- Oxfordshire
- Portsmouth City
- Reading
- Southampton City
- Surrey
- West Berkshire
- West Sussex
- Windsor and Maidenhead
- Wokingham Borough
Greater Manchester
- Bolton
- Bury
- Manchester
- Oldham
- Rochdale
- Salford
- Stockport
- Tameside
- Trafford
- Wigan