Addressing the challenges in the care sector is one of the most pressing social issues facing the UK and we are proud to support social enterprise to tackle some of these problems.

Though our Social Innovation Pioneers programme, we work with Oomph!, an organisation dedicated to transforming the day-to-day health and quality of life of older people through providing exercise classes in residential care and nursing homes. These classes don’t just improve mobility, they are critical for social interaction and mental stimulation as well.

We serve Oomph! in the same way as we would our largest clients. We delivered market analysis to help it understand its expansion possibilities and introduced it to key influencers from across the market to build important, long-term relationships. We recognised that by helping Oomph! recruit and retain the best talent, we could support its ambitious growth plans. Our tax team put in place a share option plan (called an Enterprise Management Incentive), which allows small and medium-sized enterprises to reward key staff with shares in the business and align their interests with other key stakeholders. It is an important tool that allows small businesses to compete with larger organisations for the best talent.

Our support helped contribute to almost £350,000 in new contract wins, a further £200-400k of potential business and an unprecedented 12 times increase in the number of older people participating in Oomph! classes in the past year. Ben Allen, CEO and founder of Oomph!, said: