Eammon Price, Chief Executive at Flourish, a digital learning and wellbeing platform supporting the social care workforce, reflects on the growing pressures facing care and education professionals — and why technology and innovation must be part of the solution.
You only have to watch the news for 10 minutes to see that the care and education sectors are under severe strain. Social care is overwhelmed, schools are struggling to retain staff, and children’s services and fostering services are critically under-resourced. What keeps me awake at night is the scale of the challenge we face — and how quickly it is growing.
Over the next decade, the burden on younger generations will be immense. An ageing population will need more care just as there are fewer working-age people to provide it. Meanwhile, low pay, stress, burnout and poor conditions drive people out faster than they can be replaced. Without intervention, we’ll have exhausted workers, neglected children, unsupported families and a generation stretched beyond its limits.
My perspective on these challenges is shaped deeply by my own background. Raised in Liverpool, my mum worked in social care and became a foster carer, my nan ran a care home and my other nan adopted two adult residents with Down Syndrome, raising them after having her own eight children. Growing up surrounded by people who dedicated their lives to caring for others leaves a lasting impression.
I have grown up seeing the pressures on social workers first-hand. The extraordinary commitment to care shown every day by those in the care sector in incredibly difficult circumstances shouldn’t be taken for granted. At some point in our lives, we will all depend on these services. From a societal perspective, we all have a part to play, no matter how big or how small.
Flourish, part of The Progress Group, is a small business of 35, but we support nearly 200,000 people across our services. We are uniquely positioned to drive meaningful change, which gives us the opportunity to set higher standards, innovate responsibly and create positive ripple effects throughout the sector.
Raised around people making a difference in care, and now as the CEO of Flourish, I am taking my responsibility seriously to ensure that Flourish’s impact is both substantial and lasting, shaping a future where the sectors we reach are stronger, more resilient and better aligned with the needs of society.
One of the biggest risks facing the workforce is the vicious cycle many services now find themselves in. Staff shortages lead to rising workloads, which increases stress and harms wellbeing, which then pushes more people out of the sector. Those who remain often lack the time for training and development, resulting in a less skilled workforce.
This was very much in our minds when we launched the ‘Flourish Wellbeing’ app. The app offers personalised wellbeing support, helping workers in these sectors build resilience with tailored tools and resources to help address the issues they have identified. By better equipping workers to manage their wellbeing, the app helps to break the cycle which often leads to people leaving the sector due to stress and burnout.
For me, technology represents one of the biggest opportunities for change. Flourish Wellbeing is allowing us to break this cycle using technology, and more broadly I believe AI and digital tools can help sectors meet growing demand while keeping care human-centred. Technology can boost productivity and expand capacity — an area we are constantly looking to develop further at Flourish.
In sectors where individuals simply don’t have enough time, the ability to impart knowledge and wellbeing support efficiently can increase productivity and ultimately help deliver higher-quality services. Technology has a particularly important role to play in the e-learning and wellbeing space. Platforms like Flourish Wellbeing now create tailored journeys that were previously too complicated and resource intensive before AI advancements.
There is also a real opportunity to rethink how staffing works. In the sectors we operate in — especially social care — we can grow the overall number of carers by allowing them to easily schedule their own shifts around existing commitments.
Click Shifts was created with this intention. The platform connects clients to local, vetted carers at short notice without the need for a traditional agency, enabling financial benefits for both the carer and the provider. It helps increase capacity across the sector, makes better use of existing skills and ultimately delivers better outcomes for individuals.
However, technology alone will not solve the structural challenges facing these sectors. Nationally, we must also rethink how we value the people who work in care and education. Teaching is fundamental to shaping future generations, yet the profession no longer carries the appeal it once did when it comes to attracting the strongest talent.
In care, many people are drawn into the sector through personal experience rather than pay. The sector relies heavily on that compassion, often expecting commitment without sufficient support or fair compensation. We need to reframe the national conversation around these sectors so that the pay, development opportunities and conditions reflect the crucial role these workers play in our society.
The reality is that the sectors are in crisis, and we have been saying this repeatedly over the years. Yet despite repeated warnings, consultations, white papers and policy interventions — from one government to the next — meaningful change remains slow.
We have spent too much time talking about solutions without implementing them. What is needed now is consistent action to build a sustainable, well-supported system that can meet the growing needs of society. The crisis is not going away on its own, and neither should our commitment to solving it.
Despite these challenges, I remain hopeful about the future. If it was not for the technological advancements we have seen in the past few years, I would be genuinely concerned about the future of social care and education.
But these innovations give me hope that we can build sectors that remain human-centred while becoming far more productive and efficient through the smart use of technology. Technology will never replace the human element, but it can help us work smarter — allowing people to focus on what truly matters in the care and education sectors: caring for others and supporting learners.
