About Impact Guru
Mike Harrison
Founder & CEO, Impact Guru
Our Mission
Impact Guru exists to improve adult social care strategy, governance and operational delivery through practical, open-access guidance grounded in real-world sector experience.
The platform supports providers, commissioners, NHS teams, managers, governance leads and other professional decision-makers to strengthen quality, improve outcomes, reduce operational risk and build more resilient services.
Its purpose is simple: to help improve the lives of people receiving care and support while helping organisations operate safely, sustainably and confidently within increasingly complex regulatory, commissioning and operational environments.
Adult social care is at its strongest when good governance, person-centred support, skilled leadership, evidence and practical delivery come together. Impact Guru aims to bridge the gap between policy, regulation, research and the realities of frontline practice.
A Growing Professional Knowledge Platform
Impact Guru has developed beyond a conventional article library into a wider professional knowledge ecosystem combining substantial subject Knowledge Hubs, practical Intelligence Resources and an expanding programme of international system analysis.
The UK platform contains more than 10,000 open-access articles spanning adult social care, community health, governance, commissioning, workforce, quality, safeguarding, technology and service development.
Alongside this UK knowledge base, Impact Guru is developing dedicated International Knowledge Hubs examining ageing, long-term care, community support, prevention, integrated care, workforce, technology, quality and system reform across different countries.
The objective is not simply to describe how other systems work. International analysis is intended to support practical learning: identifying approaches, reforms and delivery models that may help providers, commissioners and system leaders think differently about future care and support.
What the Knowledge Hub Covers
The Impact Guru Knowledge Hub includes substantial professional content across areas such as:
- adult social care governance and operational oversight
- CQC readiness, inspection preparation and quality improvement
- safeguarding, risk management and positive risk enablement
- Positive Behaviour Support and restrictive practice reduction
- learning disability, physical disability, mental health and acquired brain injury services
- supported living, outreach and domiciliary care
- strengths-based practice, co-production and person-centred support
- workforce capability, supervision, retention and leadership
- outcomes measurement, audit, assurance and evidencing quality
- digital transformation, AI, cybersecurity and operational technology
- commissioning, procurement and tender development
- social value and community impact
- service sustainability, operational resilience and improvement planning
- ageing, long-term care, prevention and integrated community support
- international care-system development and global best practice
Individual subjects are developed through interconnected articles, specialist pathways and substantial cornerstone resources so that users can move from an initial question into deeper operational and strategic analysis.
International Knowledge and Global Learning
Care systems around the world are responding to many of the same pressures: population ageing, workforce shortages, rising complexity, financial constraint, growing demand for support at home and the need to integrate health, care and community services more effectively.
Impact Guru's International Knowledge Hubs explore how different countries are responding to these challenges and what can be learned from their policy, funding, workforce, prevention, technology and service-delivery models.
The international programme is being developed as a structured body of country-specific knowledge rather than occasional international commentary. Dedicated article series allow individual systems to be examined in depth while also creating opportunities for comparison and cross-system learning.
This international perspective complements rather than replaces the platform's UK focus. Its purpose is to widen the evidence and ideas available to people working to improve adult social care and community support.
From Knowledge to Practical Intelligence
Impact Guru also develops practical Intelligence Resources designed to help professionals move from reading and understanding to assessment, planning and action.
These resources can support areas such as:
- regulatory and evidence readiness
- quality improvement and assurance
- governance maturity and leadership
- performance intelligence and dashboards
- positive risk enablement
- social value and community impact
- digital transformation, AI and cyber readiness
- scenario modelling and organisational planning
The intention is not to replace professional judgement. It is to provide structured tools that help users identify gaps, challenge assumptions, organise evidence and make complex professional decisions more systematic.
Impact Guru and Impact Insights USA
Impact Guru operates alongside Impact Insights, a connected USA-facing professional knowledge platform focused on U.S. community-based care, HCBS, long-term services and supports, IDD services, behavioural health, ageing services and wider human services.
The two platforms maintain distinct terminology, professional contexts and audiences while sharing a wider commitment to evidence-led knowledge, practical implementation and international learning.
Together, they enable professional subjects to be examined through both UK and U.S. system perspectives while supporting a broader international knowledge programme across ageing, long-term care and community support.
Our Values
- Practicality: Content should support real decisions, real services and real operational challenges.
- Openness: The Knowledge Hub is built around open access because useful professional knowledge should be widely available.
- Honesty: Impact Guru addresses difficult realities including workforce pressure, commissioning complexity, regulatory risk, financial sustainability and system constraint.
- Person-centred thinking: Strong governance and better systems should ultimately improve people's lives, rights, choices and outcomes.
- Operational realism: Guidance considers how services actually work, not only how policy or regulation says they should work.
- Evidence: Good decisions require credible information, transparent reasoning and a willingness to challenge assumptions.
- Learning across systems: Valuable ideas can emerge from different organisations, sectors and countries when they are examined critically rather than copied uncritically.
- Quality and resilience: Better care depends upon both strong outcomes for people and sustainable, well-led organisations.
About Mike
Impact Guru was founded by Mike Harrison, a social care consultant, tender writer and sector specialist with more than 20 years of experience across adult social care, commissioning and operational improvement.
Mike has supported large providers, SMEs and start-up organisations across learning disability, physical disability, mental health, acquired brain injury, supported living, domiciliary care and community-based services.
His work has included bid and tender development, operational governance, service development, procurement support, quality improvement, commissioning engagement, mobilisation planning and evidencing complex care delivery across regulated services.
That experience shapes the way Impact Guru approaches professional knowledge: strategic enough to understand systems and policy, but grounded strongly enough in operations to ask what implementation actually looks like in practice.
Why Impact Guru Exists
Social care organisations are expected to evidence quality, manage risk, support independence, maintain skilled workforces, meet regulatory expectations, respond to commissioners, adopt new technology and remain financially sustainable.
These pressures are often discussed separately. In real services they are deeply connected.
Impact Guru exists to make those connections clearer.
Through substantial Knowledge Hub content, practical Intelligence Resources and increasingly international analysis, the platform aims to support better professional judgement, stronger governance and more effective service development.
At its heart, Impact Guru remains focused on a straightforward objective: better lives for people receiving support, stronger and more resilient organisations, and better-informed decisions across care systems.