Richard Broughton, Chief Commercial Officer

 

Last week at Care Show Birmingham, I joined Lara Bywater (The OS and LDC Care) and Marie Cox (Care Quality Commission) to discuss a difficult question: how do we keep people safe without designing choice, control and ordinary life out of their support?

Before working in social care, I trained as an architect, designing specialist environments for people with complex needs. I focused on layouts, compliance and risk, but those first buildings became a catalyst for learning more about the people who lived and worked in them and their everyday experiences. That curiosity led me into care operations, strategy and development, where I came to understand that a technically successful building is not necessarily a good home.

Physical features matter, but people experience a place through how it makes them feel: whether they are comfortable, safe, connected and in control.

A good home should make everyday life possible, creating space for people to enjoy activities, share experiences and spend time together.

 

Restrictions rarely begin with an intention to limit someone’s life. They grow from sensible safeguards. Over time, the kitchen is locked, doors require staff permission and routines become fixed. What began as protection becomes everyday reality.

One question has become a useful test for me: what does this decision make possible? Does it increase choice, participation and control? Does it build confidence, independence or connection? Or is it mainly addressing our own anxiety about risk?

Safety and independence are not opposites. Informed, dynamic and compassionate support enables choice, considered risk and control. That starts with understanding

what matters to the person, what a good day looks like and what gives them purpose and belonging.

That combination of design and operational experience now shapes our approach: developing environments with the people who will live and work in them, then aligning skilled support, confident leadership, staffing, routines, technology and risk decisions around the life each person wants to lead. People already have dignity; our responsibility is to respect it.

The real value of a supportive environment is found in everyday life: opportunities to connect, make choices, develop confidence and be yourself.

 

A building should be a quiet enabler. The real measure of success is whether the person living there has greater choice, stronger connections and more control over a life that feels like their own.