Social care technology grew rapidly over the past 5 years. A variety of digital and technical solutions for the range of challenges that care providers face every day. In the rush to provide effective solutions suppliers created a new problem, replacing analogue silos of information with digital ones. The Nourish Partnership Programme addresses this problem by building a comprehensive digital estate of integration partners, that our users can review and apply to their service as required, so they can continue to provide outstanding care for their communities.
The Language of Communication
At Nourish Care we are excited to announce our partnership with Altra, a wellbeing and engagement app. We have covered their activities, wellbeing, feedback and survey features previously. In our final blog we are going to cover our favourite focus of Altra, communication and community.
Altra is an Irish company who were founded in 2019. Their name, directly translated from Gaeilge means ‘nurse’. In this linguistic spirit we would like to share with you another popular Irish phrase; Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. It means ‘People live in each other’s shadows.’ Admittedly something is lost in the translation, but the heart of this message rings true regardless of tongue. We rely on each other for shelter, for strength, for community.
Our family and friends play a crucial role in our lives. When a provider wants to help people to live their lives to the fullest, they must consider the involvement of family and friends, otherwise known as their circle of care. The closer connected someone remains with their circle of care, the more involved and engaged they feel in their own life. Altra gives users the tools to support circles of care, evidence engagement and promote connections on terms that both care providers and the people who draw upon their service can be comfortable with.
Direct Feedback and Lived Experience
The Single Assessment Framework is the Care Quality Commission’s new approach to inspections. The first of the 6 new evidence categories of this framework is ‘People’s experience of health and care services’. In their own words:
“This is all types of evidence from people who have experience relating to a specific health or care service, or a pathway across services. It also includes evidence from families, carers and advocates for people who use services.”
Care providers who engage routinely with the people using their service and their circles of care benefit from a constantly updating record of the experiences of their care. Evidence of which impresses regulators regardless of geography. This information is invaluable for shaping your care, as well as your inspection rating. Altra provides a platform for wellbeing and activities information to be both recorded and shared. One that is rooted in lived experience, regulatory requirements and familial responsibility.
Family Matters
Family means ‘Ohana’, and ‘Ohana’ means nobody gets left behind. This is one of the many key life lessons imparted by Disney’s 2002 classic Lilo and Stitch. A loved one receiving care is a source of great relief for many families, but also one of great stress. The natural impulse to check in on them consistently is one we have all felt towards those we care about. While entrusting your loved one to receive care from a service is a source of immense relief, it is still only natural to want to check in on that service.
Altra makes this process not only simple, but beneficial to all parties. It gives families the tools to share their perception and experience of the care their loved one is receiving with the care provider.
There is an understandable apprehension amongst care providers when deciding how much to involve families and friends in the inner workings of their loved one’s care. The information care providers choose to share with a person’s circle of care needs to be detailed enough to satisfy their questions, while being digestible enough to calm their concerns. Altra provides a suite of features so you can directly link people into a circle of care, clearly illustrate the activities their loved one is engaged with and their level of wellbeing.
The Family App
Altra provides a secure engagement application that allows care providers to share updates on the well-being of people utilising their service directly with their circle of care. This app works a bit like an Instagram feed updating the interested party with all the relevant information they need regarding their loved one’s care.
Altra simplifies the process of engaging and collaborating with a person’s circle of care. You can share information with families in a variety of forms, including video, photos and direct messages. Providers use these different formats to paint a complete picture of the support they are providing, and the life the person using their service is living as a result.
This app is not a one-way street either. It promotes engagement by allowing families to post updates for their loved ones as well. Altra enables these digital updates to be easily converted to physical printed newsletters, delighting the people you support. Specific information that speaks to the individuality of the people using your service and promotes the connections that make life worth living.
Simplifying Visits
Altra goes beyond digital connections. Care home operators can use the app to set up ‘family events’. Invite relevant people to the event and it will display who is attending, who has responded and so on. Through this functionality Altra promotes visits in a way that easily feeds back into your existing system. You can include as much information about the planned visit as you want. This simplifies your organisational process while maintaining an up-to-date record of the visit for reviewing and reporting purposes.
Of course, not everyone will be able to visit all the time. You can also arrange video calls through Altra to make sure that residents stay connected to their circle of care.
The app even includes a concierge service. This can be used by the circle of care in a variety of ways, including ordering special requests from the kitchen (such as birthday cakes!) or booking specific outings and events for their loved one. All requests are easily recordable and reportable so you can efficiently factor them into your invoicing process.
The Many Forms of Communication
Care comes in all shapes and sizes, and it casts a long shadow. One that people, families and communities use for shelter. The more involved everyone feels in the construction of this shelter, the more satisfaction everyone takes in its success. With Nourish and Altra you can build strong connections throughout your service, capitalising on the ones that are already there, and providing the foundations for many more.
You can read more about Altra’s functionality:
Activities and Wellbeing
Feedback and Surveys
