Beginning life as the National Nursery Examination Board (NNEB) in 1945, we have continued to evolve throughout our history. FCC emerged from the sale of the awarding organisation, the Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education (CACHE), in September 2015. The charity today consists of an engaged group of Trustees, a close-knit executive team, and a sizeable endowment. Her Majesty, the late the Queen, was our Royal Patron for whose service we are immensely grateful. We anticipate there will be transition in due course.
FCC is an ambitious, visionary organisation focused on facilitating and leading the beneficial transformation of health and care provision.
We collaborate not only with policymakers, practitioners, think-tanks, and other charities, but also with innovators, investors, private providers, and, of course, our beneficiaries themselves in order to design solutions that test our hypotheses and answer the questions we pose.
We are a commercially aware organisation, looking for opportunities to further the charity’s interests by monetising our impact work in order to remain independent. This includes investing our profit and capital in activities that directly benefit our beneficiaries. This is best exemplified by the planned establishment of an Innovation Fund. The fund will invest our own and third-party capital in exciting commercial ventures for both societal impact, within the scope of our charitable objects, and a commercial return. We made our inaugural investment in 2018 and are in the process of partnering with an established fund manager to bring our vision to life.
Of particular focus at present is addressing the considerable unmet needs of people with mental health issues. Via our Mental Health Exemplar project we have established powerful stakeholder networks, evaluated over 300 digital mental health solutions and are supporting the development of better and accelerated access to evidenced tools to address the substantial gaps in care.