Care Technology Works Best When Families Lead

The Government’s Clear Mandate for Co-Design

The government committed to co-developing its 10-Year Health Plan, titled Fit For The Future, the NHS’s biggest ever public conversation. Family-led co-design sits at its core, with working groups examining how technology can support more personalised, adaptable care. The Casey Commission have an equally clear directive: give people who rely on care, and their families, more power in the system. The mandate for family-led innovation couldn’t be stronger. 

The challenge? Translating policy into practice. There is a vast gap between what the government intends and what is actually happening on the ground. At Canary Care, we believe that the best innovations come from listening to the people who matter most. 

Co-Design vs Co-Production: Understanding the Difference 

Co-design means involving families from the start, defining problems together, shaping solutions together. Co-production goes further: shared power, shared decision-making throughout. Most care technology projects claim to be co-designed. In reality, families are brought in late to validate decisions already made, asked to comment on prototypes rather than shape direction. 

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) research reveals the disconnect clearly: 

• Only 28% of family members believe co-production has improved social care 

• 72% of professionals think it’s working 

Just 59% of people with lived experience have had any opportunity to co-produce o co-produce the tools used to support them 

Why Families Hold the Essential Knowledge 

Family carers bring insight into the everyday struggles that don’t always show up in professional care plans. They know the balance between independence and safety, the financial pressures, the emotional dimensions no algorithm can capture. When a parent struggles with the stairs, a carer is not looking for data to feed back to a provider, they’re looking for a way to help that person feel safe, capable, and dignified 

Yet families face specific barriers to meaningful involvement. SCIE’s report found that families are frustrated by “decisions being made too quickly” and “lack of practical support.” Many described initiatives that “started well but went quiet”, their ideas welcomed, then ignored. This creates a vicious cycle where families become reluctant to invest time and energy in processes that lead nowhere.

How Real Family-Led Co-Design Works: The Canary Care Example

At Canary Care, we have taken a different path, rather than building a standardised system and asking families to adapt, we designed our platform so families can shape and reconfigure it to meet their own evolving needs.  

The recent SCIE report illustrates this perfectly, one family didn’t just use our home monitoring technology; they reconfigured it to address a deeply personal challenge: rebuilding confidence on the stairs after a fall. The Canary Care monitoring system became part of a recovery journey. It reassured relatives while providing evidence of progress. Most importantly, it allowed the family to solve their own problem, rather than fitting into a pre-designed solution. 

The impact was tangible: 

• The elderly parent regained confidence and independence 

• Family members living overseas received reassurance 

• Relatives could return to work knowing their loved one was safe 

• Domiciliary care was safely withdrawn, reducing costs 

• The system provided evidence healthcare professionals could use 

But here’s what mattered most; because the family had shaped how it worked, they trusted it. They used it and saw the benefit.

Why This Matters Now 

Government strategy is clear, the mandate is there, the evidence is mounting; family-led co-design is not a nice-to-have; it’s how innovation in care works. 

At Canary Care, we are committed to leading this shift. We have published report (Download report here ) on the barriers holding back wider technology-enabled care adoption in the UK, and how smarter, simpler technology can unlock better care at home.

If you would like to find out how this could work for your service, contact us and we would be happy to walk you through it.