Mariana Costea
Care Governance & Operational Improvement Specialist
Mariana Costea is a Registered Nurse, C-CAF Accredited Consultant, author and Founder & Director of Mareric Limited, with 17+ years of experience across health and social care.
Her career has taken her from frontline care and nursing through registered management, regional clinical leadership, service turnaround and independent consultancy.
That experience shapes how she works today: starting with the reality of care, following the evidence and looking beyond whether governance systems exist to whether they actually work.
My Journey in Care
My career in health and social care began in 2009 while studying nursing in Romania, combining formal education with practical experience in healthcare and care settings.
After moving to the UK in 2012, I worked in domiciliary and residential care before progressing into registered nursing, unit leadership, deputy management, registered management and regional clinical leadership.
Those roles gave me experience from very different perspectives: delivering care directly, managing clinical risk, leading teams, running services and supporting multiple services at organisational level.
Today, as an independent consultant, I draw on all of those perspectives when assessing a service.
I understand what a governance decision looks like in a boardroom, but I also understand what it can mean for the person receiving care and the member of staff trying to deliver it.
That connection between governance and frontline reality sits at the centre of how I work.
Why I Founded Mareric
I founded Mareric because I wanted the freedom to look at care organisations differently.
Working inside services taught me that serious problems rarely appear without warning. More often, small gaps develop across leadership, systems, communication and everyday practice. They become familiar. Workarounds become normal. Assurance begins to move away from reality.
By the time the organisation recognises the scale of the problem, operational drift may already be well established.
Independent consultancy gives me the ability to stand outside those internal assumptions, follow the evidence wherever it leads and ask questions that can be difficult to ask from inside the organisation.
Mareric exists to help organisations see that reality earlier, understand what is driving it and turn that understanding into practical improvement.
Not simply to identify what is wrong, but to help establish whether what comes next actually works.
My Professional Credentials
- Registered Nurse (Adult) | NMC
- C-CAF Accredited Consultant
- Level 5 Diploma in Management & Leadership in Health & Social Care
- Founder & Director, Mareric Limited
- Author of Stopping the Drift
- 17+ years across health and social care
Experience across frontline care, nursing, registered management, regional clinical leadership and independent consultancy
Where I Make a Difference
I am typically brought in when an organisation needs greater clarity about what is happening inside a service and what needs to happen next.
This may include:
• concerns about governance or regulatory readiness
• recurring problems that existing action plans have not resolved
• deteriorating performance or operational instability
• leadership teams struggling to regain control
• uncertainty about whether existing assurance reflects practice
• significant improvement that needs independent implementation or validation
I bring independent challenge, structure and practical direction.
I don't add noise. I remove it.
Ready to Start a Conversation?
If something in your organisation does not feel right, you do not need to know exactly what type of consultancy support to request.
Tell me what is happening, what is concerning you and what you need to understand or improve.
I will tell you openly whether I believe Mareric can help and what level of support, if any, would be appropriate.
Confidential. Independent. No unnecessary sales process.
Client Reflection
“Mariana didn’t just help us pass an inspection, she changed how we think, how we lead, how we care. The shift was permanent.”
Registered Manager, North West