Articles and Insights
Sector Insights | Leadership Lens | Beyond Compliance
Social Sector in 2025: A Year of Reform, Reckoning and Renewal
2025 brought both pressure and progress across aged care, disability, and social services - reshaping the social sector in profound ways. From the new Aged Care Act to shifts in disability policy and workforce expectations, organisations have navigated change at every level.
In our wrap-up of the year, we reflect on these, the challenges and cultural shifts that shaped the sector, and what they mean for leaders preparing for 2026. Amid uncertainty, one thing is clear: the opportunity to build stronger, more values-aligned organisations has never been greater.
Will 2026 take the sector beyond the challenges reform, and provide opportunities for real transformation?
Creating a Safeguarding Culture: Why Leadership and Governance Matter
The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards (2025) place ‘consumer voice’ and ‘governance’ at the core of sector and service reform. The reviews of recent years (such as the NDIS Review and Aged Care Royal Commission) have told us a consistent story - compliance alone was never going to keep people safe. Safeguarding cannot be a document in a folder. It needs to be lived and visible every day. Culture doesn’t change with a new template or a ticked training record. In this article we discuss the questions that matter most, now - those that will separate compliance-driven organisations from those leading cultural change.