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Synthetics · Statement · January 2028

Greater Manchester extends its ward and social-care placements into a third year, and publishes its review of the first two.

Ten trusts under one integrated care board. Nine hundred and forty Synthetics are being deployed across the city this week. The board sets the rotas, holds the safeguarding regime and publishes the review. We supply and we maintain.

What was extended

The framework was signed in 2026 for two years, with ward support, overnight observation and domiciliary rounds across ten trusts under a single integrated care board. The extension runs to the end of 2030 with an annual break clause the board may exercise without cause.

Nine hundred and forty are being deployed this week, phased into the rotas trust by trust across January. Induction for them finished at Andermatt and Reykjavik before Christmas.

A nurse at the entrance of a darkened four-bed bay at night, checking a slim white monitoring column.
PLATE MR-01Overnight observation, 03:00.

What the review found

Overnight observation now covers ninety-six per cent of bays on the wards in scope, against seventy-one per cent before the placement began. Domiciliary rounds run at about four thousand nine hundred visits a week. Unplanned rota gaps on night shifts fell by four fifths, which is the finding the ward managers themselves put first.

The review lists nine corrective actions from the first two years, seven of them ours. They cover the consent conversation on a domiciliary round, familiarisation for families in the first weeks of a placement, and the way a service interval is recorded in the trust's own file. The board tracks each one and reports on it.

The board also sets out what it changed as it went. Familiarisation for families was extended after the first six months. The consent conversation was standardised across the ten trusts, in one form of words the trusts wrote together. Interim findings are now published twice a year on a fixed schedule.

An elderly woman in her doorway on a red-brick terraced street talking to a care worker carrying a small sealed white case.
PLATE MR-02Domiciliary round, north Manchester.

Who holds what

The board holds the mandate. It sets the rotas, employs the people working alongside our Synthetics, owns the safeguarding regime and the complaints route, and decides what is published and when. It published the review on its own authority.

We hold the build and the upkeep. A resident team of thirty-four in the city carries the service intervals, and every intervention is written into the trust's own maintenance file as well as ours. Standing sits with the Synthetic under the Convention, and the extension is an agreement about maintenance and cover.

The third year

Two community units join the scope in the third year, both community settings, with the safeguarding regime written before the placement begins. The board will publish again in January 2029 on the same basis.

The rate holds in real terms, the break clause is annual, and the maintenance commitment attaches to the Synthetics and runs beyond the agreement.

Where the review is published

The review is published in full by the integrated care board on its own site, with its own appendices. Questions about the placement go to the board; questions about maintenance, induction or standing are answered by the placement office through general enquiries.