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3. How to use this guide

Last updated: 9 Jun 2025

The guide explains the principles of positive cultures. Positive cultures promote the well-being of people who access, or work in, social care services and support them to thrive.

The values and behaviours behind the principles aren’t new – they’re embedded in legal duties and professional standards. 

But the principles bring the evidence, values and behaviours together and show how they all contribute to a positive culture.

Each principle in this guide is important on its own. But when we use them together, we can help make a positive difference to people’s lives. 

The guide includes links to resources, programmes and tools to help you put the principles into practice. You should use the guide flexibly to meet the needs of your organisation. 

You can use it to: 

  • prioritise well-being and what matters to people and the staff who support them
  • have a shared understanding of positive cultures, so we can work together to make sure social care is the best it can be
  • create a culture that values continuous learning and improvement, by:
    • sharing what works
    • learning when things don’t go to plan
    • changing things that aren’t working.

We’ll use data from research, and people’s experiences and outcomes, to keep developing this guide.

This guide supports: 

The principles

This guide has six sections. There are tools and resources to help you use the principles, and examples of how other people have used that principle in their work.

There are five principles:

  1. positive cultures protect, promote and support people’s rights
  2. positive cultures have compassionate leaders
  3. positive cultures share positive values and behaviours
  4. positive cultures have good relationships based on strengths
  5. positive cultures support learning, development and continuous improvement.

Each of these principles must be supported by systems and processes that promote positive cultures. We explain how this could work at the end of the guide.

They each depend on one another, with everybody and everything working towards a common purpose.

How we developed the principles

High profile inquiries, including the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Winterbourne View and Operation Jasmine, have all highlighted what can happen to people when the culture of the service they’re receiving is poor.

We asked the Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE) to research evidence about the key ingredients of positive culture in social care.

This guide is based on this research and from conversations with our partners, including:

  • the National Commissioning Board
  • Welsh Government policy leads
  • ADSS Cymru
  • local authority representatives, or heads of services for children and adults
  • the Older People’s Commissioner
  • the Children’s Commissioner for Wales
  • Carers Wales. 

SCIE’s research showed us:

  • there’s clear evidence and links between a positive culture and good outcomes for people (people who access services and the people who support them)
  • a positive culture is the basis for good quality care
  • we have to focus on people’s rights when we develop positive cultures
  • different models of care have common principles, but no specific model ‘does it all’
  • there are resources to help support a positive culture, but the information isn’t available in one place
  • leadership is crucial when creating and maintaining positive cultures in social care
  • the sector needs to work together to achieve what matters to people.

SCIE’s Leadership in strengths-based social care briefing says:

“To promote positive cultures, we need to ensure systems and processes are relevant to people and staff. 

“This includes changing practice, systems, and processes in pursuit of a shift from a focus on deficits and services to personalised and place-based outcomes.” 

Read SCIE’s research on supporting positive cultures in social care settings in Wales.  

You can read the Operation Jasmine practice review on the Social Care Wales website.