Care Management Matters
Care Management Matters, universally known in its sector as CMM, is a United Kingdom magazine for the people who own, run and lead adult social care services. Published by Care Choices Ltd, it describes itself as social care's thinking person's magazine and as the complete social care management journal, read by executives and senior managers in adult social care and their business advisers. Where care-sector publishing often addresses frontline practice, CMM addresses leadership: finance, regulation, workforce, quality, technology and policy, in bespoke editorial commissioned from leading experts. Its content is free to access, and the magazine is supported by a website, podcasts, events and webinars that together serve care home, home care and supported living providers across the country.
Published by Care Choices
CMM is produced by Care Choices Ltd, a publisher that has been publishing in social care for over twenty years. Care Choices explains that it evolved from developing care services directories for local authorities into a multimedia publisher and event producer, and it remains best known to the public for its care directories and care search services, which help families find care homes and home care. For the trade, CMM is its flagship editorial voice. Exhibitor listings for the care shows give Care Choices' address at Valley Court Offices in Royston, Hertfordshire, while the magazine in the batch record is associated with London, reflecting its national, metropolitan-facing readership and events presence. The publisher's long directory heritage matters: few media owners know the structure of the care provider market, area by area and service by service, as intimately as the company that lists it.
A magazine for owners, operators and senior executives
CMM's own descriptions are precise about its audience. It is a highly respected resource for owners, operators and senior executives working in social care, providing in-depth, bespoke editorial, news, opinion and best practice guidance on all aspects of running successful social care services. Its subscription page states that its bespoke content covers all aspects of owning and operating a successful, quality care business, whether that is a care home, a nursing home, a domiciliary care or home care agency, assisted living or another health and social care business. Content includes care market research, social care policy, interviews, comment, opinion and analysis of adult social care, meeting the business needs of health and social care providers. In short, CMM is written for the person accountable when the regulator calls, the bank asks questions or a staffing crisis hits.
Frequency and free access
CMM publishes a monthly magazine in a pattern of ten editions per year, and access to all of its content is free. That model distinguishes it from subscription journals: by making features, daily news and thought leadership freely available through its website, and the print magazine available on sign-up, CMM maximises reach among senior decision-makers, which is the audience its advertisers and event partners want. Its website is designed as the perfect companion to the magazine, carrying features to read online alongside additional content, daily news, a resource finder directory and exclusive thought-leadership articles. A weekly news roundup by email and early invitations to events complete a package intended to keep busy care leaders briefed without adding to their costs.
Bespoke, commissioned editorial
The magazine's defining editorial claim is that its content is commissioned to brief rather than assembled from press releases. CMM states that it has built its reputation on standing out from the crowd, with all editorial commissioned from leading social care experts, and that readers can put questions to care sector policy-makers, understand the adult social care market and learn how to tackle the pressures their businesses face. Contributors include expert bodies; its content partnerships have drawn on the Care Quality Commission, the sector's regulator, and on national figures in palliative care, workforce and provider representation, such as the National Care Association. Long-form features, interviews with policy-makers and provider leaders, and expert comment on funding, fees, inspection and employment law form the backbone of each edition.
Regulation, quality and the CQC
No topic matters more to CMM's readers than regulation. Adult social care providers in England are registered and inspected by the Care Quality Commission, and a rating can determine a service's commercial future. CMM's coverage helps leaders understand inspection frameworks, prepare their teams, respond to findings and embed the systems that produce consistently good care. Its features on topics such as end-of-life care gather practical resources for providers from national organisations including Skills for Care, Marie Curie, Macmillan and the National Bereavement Alliance, shared through its podcast and feature pages by senior figures in palliative and end-of-life care. That blend of regulatory intelligence and clinical leadership content reflects the dual nature of the registered manager's job: part chief executive, part guardian of care quality.
Workforce, wellbeing and CMM Support
Recruitment, retention and staff wellbeing are permanent crises in social care, and CMM treats the welfare of leaders themselves as part of the story. In a notable recent initiative, CMM launched a scheme to support registered managers' mental health, working with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society, whose members provide counselling at reduced rates to managers referred through the scheme, with complete confidentiality, including from CMM itself. Lisa Werthmann, CMM's director of creative operations, explained at launch that registered managers give so much of themselves to staff, clients and services that the scheme gives them a way to prioritise themselves too, and providers can fund free or subsidised therapy for their managers while preserving anonymity. Reporting and initiatives of this kind show CMM operating as more than a magazine: it acts as a sector institution concerned with the sustainability of its own readership.
Podcasts, events and webinars
CMM's brand extends across formats. Its podcast, CMM Off the Page, takes magazine themes into conversation; an episode on caring for people at the end of life, for example, brought together consultants and leaders from hospice, Jewish Care and national care bodies to share resources and experience. The publisher also produces regional and national events and webinars, and CMM is a media partner and exhibitor at the sector's major exhibitions, listed at both the Care Show Birmingham at the NEC and Care Show London, where its stand promotes the magazine and website to thousands of visiting providers. For advertisers, the magazine's advertising management sits within Care Choices, with named contacts at the publisher handling CMM, underlining that this is a commercial trade operation as well as an editorial one.
A learning resource and CPD value
CMM is recognised externally as a learning resource. The CPD Certification Service lists Care Management Matters magazine editions as CPD material from Care Choices, describing CMM as a valuable learning resource for those working in adult social care and repeating its thinking person's magazine positioning. Partnerships promoted to its readership, such as discounted access to over a hundred CPD Standards Office accredited courses through training providers, extend that role, helping members match the issues they read about — new regulations, expectations and best practice — to accredited training for themselves and their teams. In a sector where continuing professional development is both a regulatory expectation and a retention tool, a magazine that signposts credible learning earns a place in managers' routines.
Policy and the business of care
Adult social care in England is a large, fragmented market of mostly independent providers, funded through a contested mixture of local authority fees, NHS contributions and private payment, and subject to frequent policy change on everything from international recruitment to fee reform. CMM's news coverage tracks those changes as business news: when the government announced plans to end international recruitment for care workers, for example, the announcement was reported in CMM's news pages alongside its features, because for many providers it was an immediate workforce-planning issue. Market research, funding analysis and interviews with the sector's representative bodies help owners judge risks and opportunities, while practical features on technology, including mobile care planning that updates records in real time and empowers frontline staff, show how providers are adapting.
Why CMM matters
Social care employs well over a million people in the United Kingdom and supports some of its most vulnerable citizens, yet its leaders often work in small organisations with little management infrastructure. Care Management Matters gives those leaders a magazine of their own: free, expert, monthly in its ten-edition cycle, and connected to directories, events, podcasts and professional support schemes from a publisher with more than twenty years in the sector. By treating care management as a serious discipline — financial, regulatory, clinical and human at once — CMM has earned its description as the thinking person's magazine of social care, and its place on the desks of the executives and senior managers who run Britain's care services.
