Meet the Dragons Sponsors

Thank you to everyone who has made Meet The Dragons such a great success, not least our sponsors.

Innovation Exchange

The Innovation Exchange works to grow innovation from the third sector.  Innovators and commissioners of services don’t know each other’s phone numbers and lack the capacity and incentive to work together.  The Exchange is tackling this, bringing them together in collaborative innovation around the issues of excluded young people and independent living.

The Innovation Exchange works through events, research, facilitation and online exchange.  It works as platform to help innovators, commissioners and social investors to find one another and as a supporter, providing access to coaching, support and to a £200k NESTA Innovation Exchange Fund. 

CSIP

The Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) was created in 2005 by the integration of a number of initiatives supporting the development of services to help improve people’s lives.

Commissioned by the Department of Health and other agencies CSIP aims to achieve this by supporting the implementation of national policy for local benefit. They work with communities, systems and organisations that are engaged with the health and social care needs of: people with mental health problems; people with learning disabilities; older people; children, young people and families; people in the criminal justice system; and the families, carers and supporters of these groups. 

Society Guardian

Society Guardian, published every Wednesday, offers comprehensive recruitment sections, as well as news, features and careers advice.


The Guardian carries more public services jobs than any other publication and offers a whole range of appointments in social care. Also, our jobsite attracts over a million unique users every month. This makes the Guardian is an invaluable recruitment resource, both on and offline, for all professionals in the public sector.   

What if

What If! is the world’s largest independent innovation company. They work in two ways – they invent new brands, products and services for clients, and they build the innovation capacity of client teams and cultures. Established in 1992 they are now 250 people located in London, Manchester, New York and Shanghai and their client list includes the majority of FTSE 100 companies, as well several UK Government departments.

?What If! launched their Social Innovation Foundation in 2003 so that they could use their skills to support social innovators. They have worked on a range of leading projects including Jamie School’s Dinners, belu spring water, Independent Diplomat, People Tree and many more. They also work extensively with government and funding partners to help make the UK more conducive to social innovation. 

Tribal

Tribal is a leading UK provider of consulting and professional support services, with a number one position in several of their markets. They help a wide range of clients - over 2,500 in the public sector alone - improve the quality of their services to customers. 

Clients include central government departments, local authorities, housing associations, schools, colleges and universities, the NHS and primary care trusts, as well as the private, not-for-profit and third sectors. 

Social Care Institute For Excellence

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) was established by Government in 2001 to improve social care services for adults and children in the United Kingdom. They achieve this by identifying good practice and helping to embed it in everyday social care provision.

SCIE works to disseminate knowledge-based good practice guidance; involve service users, carers, practitioners, providers and policy makers in advancing and promoting good practice in social care; enhance the skills and professionalism of social care workers through tailored, targeted and user-friendly resources. 

Skills For Care

Working in consultation with carers, employers and service users, Skills for Care aims to modernise adult social care in England, by ensuring qualifications and standards continually adapt to meet the changing needs of people who use care services.

They do this by; developing national standards and a qualification framework for our sector; collecting skills data and researching issues affecting carers and people who use care services; creating a national workforce development strategy for all sectors;  and building employer-led regional support networks to liaise with health, local government and education at local, regional and national level. 

Pavilion Publishing

Pavilion was established 18 years ago with the objective of sharing best practice within the social and healthcare fields through the dissemination of high-quality training materials. Today, Pavilion is the leading provider of social and healthcare training materials in the UK.

They publish over 200 high quality training resources, 18 journals and Mental Health Today magazine. As well as publishing, they organise 5 exhibitions and over 40 conferences each year for those working within the social and healthcare and housing fields.

In Control

In Control is a leader in developing self-directed support and individual budgets as the route to independent living. It is a unique partnership between families, individuals, services, local authorities, Government and many other organisations. All these people are working together to define best practice in Self-Directed Support and Individual Budgets - and change the whole system. 

IDeA

The IDeA works for local government improvement so councils can serve people and places better. They use experienced councillors and senior officers, known as peers, who support and challenge councils to improve themselves. They enable councils to share good practice through the national Beacon Scheme and regional local government networks.

The IDeA also promotes the development of local government’s management and workforce. They advise councils on improving customer service and value for money. They help councils work through local partnerships to tackle local priorities such as health, children’s services and economic development. 

Making Change Work

Making Change Work Ltd are a behavioural change management company, specialising in coaching and innovation, and recently succesfully implemented Angels and Dragons within the HMRC.

They are providing a tailored package for all applicants, taking them through the “Meet the Dragons” process; assisting each idea proposer to present their case to the Dragons in the most effective way.  The type of coaching made available to applicants, will be around identifying benefits and other customers, developing presentations, media awareness and public speaking.   Making Change Work regularly work with organisations across many sectors helping them develop innovative solutions. 

Staff plan

StaffPlan is a leading supplier of scheduling, monitoring and point of care delivery systems to the community care industry.  Our innovative solutions are in use in more than twenty local authorities, several national chains and hundreds of independent homecare providers throughout the UK and across four continents.  StaffPlan is dedicated to providing software and services that improves the quality and efficiency of care delivery in all its markets.