Care Homes are a hive of information. Each interaction, every day reveals something valuable. However, care homes are also a hive of activity, and it is difficult to manage so many moving parts. The latest addition to the Nourish Partnership Programme, Found by Lottie, addresses these challenges directly.  

At Nourish Care we are proud to support care home providers at the point of care, and help you to provide comprehensive, person-led and community-centred care. Found by Lottie integrates fully with Nourish and works in tandem. Offering enquiry and occupancy management to support care homes, networking so you can engage, involve and evolve your community and a Finance and Billing module that allows you to meet the needs of every resident and their specific financial situations with ease. All designed to work together with Nourish so you can maximise your revenue, improve your outcomes and never lose sight of what’s important. 

If you are running a care home, you’ll need residents. One of the most important aspects of care home management is the ability to effectively handle enquiries and admissions. The process can often be time-consuming and easy to lose track of. It requires meticulous attention to detail to ensure that potential residents are matched with appropriate care settings. Found by Lottie helps care home providers streamline this process with its comprehensive enquiry management system. 

The enquiry management system empowers care home providers to manage incoming enquiries in a structured and systematic way. Found by Lottie centralises all communication, allowing staff to track and respond to each care seeker efficiently. All care home managers know too well the frustration of searching for scrawled notes in busy desktop drawers. Found ensures that all necessary information is gathered at the initial enquiry stage and stored in a centralised location. Information including medical needs, personal preferences, and family expectations, helping care home providers make informed decisions about prospective residents. Furthermore, once all of this information is gathered, and you are ready to admit the person to your service, our integration makes it a simple process to transfer it across. With the click of a button this key information is sent straight to your Nourish platform. Reducing the admin burden on your staff.’ 

In addition, the system includes automated reminders and follow-up tasks, ensuring that no enquiry ever gets lost. By simplifying and automating much of the enquiry process, Found by Lottie reduces and refines your administrative workload. Where once enquiries were scattered across different notebooks and post-it notes now your team can efficiently make informed decisions, based on easily accessible data and smooth communication. Which is why on average Found users are converting 45% more of their enquiries since implementing the system. Though in order to implement your enquiries, you need to manage your occupancy. 

Managing occupancy is a balancing act that has wrong footed many a care co-ordinator. The enduring responsibility to match demand for beds with available capacity, while ensuring that the right care is provided for everyone. Found by Lottie’s occupation management is a heavyweight feature offering an intuitive, real-time overview of all resident placements and availability so you can tip the scales in your favour.  

Found enables care home providers to track bed occupancy, highlighting which rooms or units are available, occupied, or awaiting move-in. You can also easily see if a resident requires special care, such as memory support or palliative care. So you can wrap your service around the unique needs of your community. Ensuring that you place residents in the most suitable environment for their care needs, in the best position to thrive. 

Crucially, Found’s system gives care home managers full visibility over important information. Like the resident-to-staff ratio. Which is essential for maintaining high standards of care and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. With real-time data at your fingertips, you can adjust staffing levels quickly based on occupancy rates, ensuring that residents always receive the appropriate level of attention and support.  

On average Found users experience an occupancy increase of 23%. And as all care home manager owners know, the ability to efficiently manage your occupancy is directly tied to your ability to provide outstanding care and maximise your revenue. Of course, a little networking never hurt anyone either.  

People define care. From our carers and those they support, through all the organisations, institutions and individuals who are connected to your community. Found by Lottie’s networking functionality empowers care home providers to easily communicate with a wide range of stakeholders, including family members, GPs, healthcare specialists, and local authorities. 

The age of the errant post it note is over! Found documents every interaction a care home has with each contact. Enabling your team to build up a detailed timeline that is easy to review and action. This feature provides peace of mind to families, develops trust with brokerage teams and establishes a team wide understanding of important relationships. 

Reinforce your connections by strengthening your available contact information. Over time these naturally build out into records of interactions and engagement that educate your team on your wider care community and the connections that shape your business.  

Fundamentally, Found enables you to utilise the data behind these connections. Which you can fold back into both your financial and care plans. Driving improved outcomes for your community and more opportunities for your business. Opportunities you will be in position to take advantage of thanks to a comprehensive finance and billing system. 

The financial side of running a care home is often complex and time-consuming. From managing invoices to tracking payments and handling care funding, there are numerous financial tasks that need to be completed accurately and on time. Found by Lottie’s billing system simplifies this process by automating key aspects of financial management. 

The platform enables care home providers to generate and send invoices directly from the system, ensuring that billing is accurate and up to date. With integrated billing, care homes can track payments from residents and third-party funders, such as local authorities or health insurers. This establishes a seamless process for invoicing and payment tracking, reducing administrative overheads and minimizing the risk of errors or delays. 

Found by Lottie’s billing system also supports the management of care funding and subsidies. The platform can track and apply various types of funding, ensuring that funding sources reimburse your care home correctly for the services you deliver. A perfect solution for people with support who have multiple funding sources for their care. 

And last but certainly not least, the billing system offers transparency for both care providers and residents. Provide clear, itemised bills to your residents and their families, outlining the cost of care services and any additional charges. Including real-time visibility of all the small expenses incurred at your home. This level of transparency not only improves trust but also helps ensure that all parties understand the costs associated with care. 

At its core Found by Lottie is about improving outcomes and revenue for your care home. It equips users with the tools to find new leads, manage occupancy, maximise connections and manage finances. Care managers reported saving half a day’s worth of administration time with Found, as well as an average of 18% improvement on marketing spend. When combined with Nourish, Found gives you everything you need to manage and grow your care home. With a focus on details, an understanding of innovation, and the certainty that nothing important will ever get lost again.  

As a Channel Partner, Found can be purchased directly through Nourish, if you are interested in learning more, contact us.

The benefits of digital rostering go beyond efficiency. Optimisation is about more than driving shorter routes, it’s about driving positive outcomes as well. Staff scheduling is a complicated, and crucial part of delivering outstanding home care. It requires an in-depth understanding of your area, your community and your team. One that goes beyond simply managing spreadsheets. Truly great digital rostering software gives you the tools to bring all of your experience, data and empathy to bear on the challenge of staff scheduling in home care. 

A good start is half the battle, though in home care it can often feel like an uphill battle at the beginning. Nourish Rostering’s clear overview puts you in the lifeguard’s seat; with a clear view of your service and the insight to notice trouble before it brews too long. Digital rostering centralises your vital information. You can schedule your clients’ needs and your carers availability as desired, ensuring that every appointment is covered, and every individual involved is well informed.  

You can also fill your system with pertinent information about your service and the people who make it special. Clients can detail their needs, as well as their desires and ambitions. While your carers can include their skills, their interests and their passions. Separately these are useful silos of information, but together in one system they become influential drivers of positive care outcomes. These details can then be combined with geographic factors and clinical skills as you plan appointments and build runs to best match the needs and abilities of your care community. 

That is the core power of digital rostering and home care software. The ability to bring together a wealth of information and put it at your fingertips. Unlock the expertise of your organisation by moving all the vital information from the heads and filing cabinets of your coordinators, onto a digital format. Ensuring no hour, need or opportunity gets overlooked when you are planning your care. This can feel like an uphill engagement indeed at the start! But once crested it brings speed, and specification, to your rostering process.  

Of course, nothing in home care provision is ever straightforward. Which is precisely why home care software needs to be. Any care coordinator knows the unpredictability of a home care rota. Clients’ needs change over time, availability varies for all parties, and no one can ever be certain what awaits them just around the corner.  

Any good home care rostering software needs to be reactive. Our drag-and-drop functionality is exactly that. It gives a succinct, yet detailed, overview of your schedule for the day, alongside the ability to quickly adjust appointments as necessary. Each client’s appointments are clearly shown, as well as the availability of your carers. This gives you the tools to quickly adjust when the inevitable changes need to happen. Digital rostering includes the ability to convey these changes as necessary with your team, so no one misses out on an update. 

Crucially, you can make these decisions efficiently, with the weight of experience and the information of your system behind you. Our ‘Recommend’ a carer feature includes all relevant information on your calls so that you can send the right person to the right appointment every time. These factors include travel time and distance, specified to include mode of transport, familiarity with the client, experience and specific skills required and personal preferences of both the client and potential carers. Each data point further colours the picture of your care, and you can adjust the weighting of these points to match the unique needs of your community. Therefore you are not only planning efficiently, but effectively too, so you can continue to drive positive outcomes with your care. 

Taking care of your team is a crucial part of optimising your staff scheduling. With digital rostering you can empower and inform your carers. Our all-in-one-pocket solution gives your carers a tool that has all the information they need to manage their day. An up-to-date schedule which shows not only where they need to be and when, but travel times in between. Allowing them to plan their routes effectively and adapt to changes with ease and efficiency.  

Our new ‘Time Off’ feature helps you establish and manage your teams holiday accrual. Your carers can review and request time off through their app, promoting optimisation through centralisation of your processes.  Decisions that once took half an hour can now be resolved instantaneously. This frees up your time to focus on people and outcomes, rather than balancing spreadsheets and calculators.  

Measure What Matters to You

People are what drives care, and outcomes are how we measure our impact. Understanding that impact comes from understanding the way our care shapes lives. Staff scheduling plays a huge role in this, and call monitoring is key to ensuring your information is up to date and accurate when reviewing your home care rostering. Information like actual appointment times highlight the variety of key care indicators. Such as: consistent patterns in appointment length, travel times, travel mileage and more. You can record, review and report to best shape your appointments to the needs of your community.  

This information can then be combined with other data points to optimise your digital rostering. Do you need to reduce the length of one appointment? Increase the length of another? Adjust runs to balance travel time? Or maybe change carers to account for public transport variances? When you digitise your processes, you position yourself to benefit from all the data you naturally accrue. With the right software, you can take full advantage of this opportunity to improve care quality, care efficiency, and care outcomes.  

Digital rostering offers a range of benefits for your service. It lets you optimise the information you are already gathering and refine it to improve your outcomes as well as your efficiency. Time saving is a fantastic benefit on its own, and one that many care providers who are digitising their staff scheduling have experienced. However, there are far more benefits to unlock beyond efficiency. Benefits that involve everyone in your community collaborating effectively to change the lives of everyone in your community. 

‘Co-production’ is a long-standing practice and a newly minted hot topic in social care. It is based on our ability to involve all relevant people, or ‘stakeholders’ as they say in corporate meeting rooms, in the process of care design. It guarantees that the people who are utilising a care service are involved in the production of that care. An undertaking that lies at the heart of person-led care.  

If people with support, families and commissioners expect this of care providers, then it is only natural that those care providers should demand it from their software suppliers as well. 

At Nourish Care, co-production is central to our design process. It bridges our technical expertise with our user’s care experience to produce effective, efficient solutions. Our user’s input guides our development, with feature requests, feedback forms and beta testing being just some of the essential ways we keep our user’s experience central to our development.  

The latest Innovation to emerge from this process is our new ‘Time Off Management’ functionality for Nourish Rostering and Community. We know that managing rosters is one of the most demanding aspects of providing home care, for both coordinators and carers. We developed our Time Off Management feature to address these challenges directly based on extensive user feedback, advice and industry insights.  

Our new functionality is designed to simplify your time off processes, making it easier to manage leave, maintain coverage, and ensure a smooth operation for everyone involved.  

The features of our new Time Off functionality are all directly tied to the feedback and input of our users. 

Holiday schemes allow for a group of settings to be built and then applied to relevant carers. This grants customisability and flexibility to coordinators while removing the need to configure each carers holiday settings individually. You can group holiday accrual, reference periods, pay methods and more to make the complexities of specificity a simple activity. 

We found the denominator of our feature requests for time off functionality was customisability. It is the most effective way to support the varied and at times unpredictable home care provider’s scheduling needs. 

Features like year start dates for holiday accrual, carry over time settings for different time off types and pay calculations all vary from service to service, and across different governments and geographies. For example, the holiday pay reference period in the UK is 52 worked weeks while in the Republic of Ireland it is a 13-week reference period. It was vital we build these features with the freedom for our users to customise the settings and wrap them around their unique service. 

We have also included a manual entitlement adjustment for coordinators for precise control when desired. A need we discovered when talking to a lot of the participants in our beta testing phase. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be Nourish without analytics and reporting functionality as well. We have a fantastic analysis page to help administrators keep track of their carers time off. It includes a calendar view of all booked, requested and refused time off, a chart of absence types e.g. holiday, sick, bereavement, a table view of the adjustments made to their carer’s entitlement, a table view of requests, their status and the option to filter or edit them as desired. 

We built several key new time off functions into our carer app as well. This gives more insight and control to carers. With our new Time Off Management functionality carers can request leave directly from the rostering app, simplifying the process of requesting time off for a variety of reasons including holidays, sickness and bereavement.

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

For non Nourish users who want to learn more about our approach to co-production and working with us to support their home care service, book a demo. 

We have spent years working on our rostering system to make this as quick and straightforward as possible. Something we could only achieve thanks to co-production with our users through our beta testing processes. We spoke to Samantha Rabvu, Care Manager for TLB 24/7 Healthcare, about her experience participating in our Time Off Management beta. 

“We were paper based for annual leave requests,” explained Samantha. “Which meant someone had to fill in a form and scan it or take a picture of it. Then we were constantly just printing so I could give it to the person who’s approving annual leave. So when the offer to take part in a beta test for time off came along I just thought. ‘I don’t know what it is going to look like, but it sounds like something we could really use.’

“It offered the chance to cut out the middle man, the printing, and give power to both our carers and our coordinators. It was the chance to move to real time updates, rather than requests from a variety of platforms. In December last year we had a whole lot of annual leave requests. Honestly, we lost track of them due to the volume and variety of requests. Which was a major concern for us. So, when I saw that you were building something that could show us how many people are asking for time off and those who are already taking time off before approving any more, it was a game changer for me.” 

“I felt very involved,” said Samantha. “I could see the team was really drawing out our feedback with the questions they asked. ‘How is it going?’ ‘How are you guys using it?’ ‘Are there any adjustments we should make?’ I felt like a real partner that the things were saying were being considered. When we saw one of our suggestions in the next update it was amazing. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one suggesting it, but it was awesome.  

“We were involved throughout the process, even my team here was quite involved. Any issue that they had, they knew they could bring it to me, and I would pass it on. That way we always got things resolved.” 

“They were on it,” said Samantha, “They were on the money. It was so easy. If there was an issue, I’d send a screenshot and they were on it, we looked at it in depth, it was awesome. I had a main contact point but worked with several different members of your team. I just knew that they were there. They had our back, no matter what.  

“They are awesome, friendly, approachable, and we could rely on them 100%. Even the way bad news came was awesome. When something wasn’t ready, we always knew that it was still in development, it’s just not ready yet. We understood because of the communication, and we trusted your team.” 

“We’re on the right track,” said Samantha. “This was a great starting point for me. It was fantastic. Even though I was a little unsure at the start, digital wise, this isn’t something i had a lot of experience with. The process helped us to develop skills and tactics on how to navigate the rest of the digitalization roadmap, which is great.  

“So, I’m hopeful. I’m looking forward to it, it’s exciting, because I feel involved in the process. I feel like we are growing with you, and we can build something great together.” 

The future of social care will be shaped by co-production throughout the entirely of our sector. Lived experience, collaboration, data sharing, all fold together under the guiding philosophy of teamwork and community. We received over 150 feature requests for more advanced time off functionality. Which was the starting point of our development cycle, and a continuing example of our approach to digital social care solutions. 

We still have a long way to go, and we are very excited about the journey. Why don’t you join us? 

Home care software is baked into the future of social care. We witnessed a huge increase in the uptake of digital systems across social care over the past 3 years. A change accelerated by government policy and funding. This considerable uptake brought with it a range of advantages and benefits for care providers. For example, digital rostering systems like Nourish help providers to simplify processes, reduce administration times and record more detailed information. With digital systems becoming commonplace in social care there has never been a more urgent time to switch to Nourish. Admissions for the funding available through Integrated Care Systems will close at the end of November. Even for those providers who are still getting up and running choosing the right digital rostering system is crucial for many reasons. 

Nourish gives you the tools to take full control over your home care administration. This means more than rosters designed for simple and swift use. It means a robust system compiling the wealth of data your teams naturally gather to provide you with a clear overview of what is happening in your community.  

With Nourish you can schedule your carers and clients up to four weeks in advance. Repeating these schedules with ease to improve consistency across your service. Of course, as all home care administrators understand, nothing ever goes totally to schedule. Nourish home care rostering is designed with drag and drop functionality that makes changing your schedule on short notice easier than ever. Our home care software includes a ‘recommend a carer’ feature that is scored based on a range of data points you choose and weight. Such as: familiarity with client, travel to appointment and relevant skills for the appointment’s tasks. So, you can adjust quickly, decisively and with confidence. 

Digital rostering offers benefits beyond simplifying existing paper processes. Nourish Rostering and Community unlock a range of features that put new innovations and fresh information at your fingertips. Call monitoring is a straightforward way to record actual appointment times. Nourish includes geographic location and a range of electronic call monitoring options to suit your needs. Care providers, especially those with local authority and council contracts can attest to the benefits of a robust call monitoring system. 

Crucially, with a quality home care software like Nourish, you can access data at a level previously unattainable with paper. This data is easily presentable and evidencable in trends and reports. You can track different factors regarding your team and community to give you a more detailed overview of your service. These details, like travel times and medical administration, can be fed back into your service to drive positive outcomes. As well as acting as informative evidence for your regulator. 

Nourish home care software supports care providers across your service. Home care requires a great deal of administration and organising. Beyond the design of schedules and care packages there is the crucial matter of making sure everything is in order, and everyone is properly paid. This can be quite daunting for people when they are just setting out their new home care service. Especially those less familiar with operating a business.  

Our invoicing and timesheets are a simple way for you to organise your payroll. You can use Nourish to set specific pay rates and charge rates, to match with the responsibilities of your teams and the services they provide. Our home care software includes comprehensive time-off functionality. Allowing you to set the rate at which holiday is earned, and for your team to manage and request leave through the Nourish home care app. 

Big changes are rarely simple. But with the future of social care coming at us at its current speed, now is the simplest time to do it. The best home care software comes backed up with a human team. People who will work with you to make sure you get everything you need from your system. At Nourish we pride ourselves on being person-led and community-centred. We are incredibly excited about the future of social care, and we’d love to share it with you. 

If you want to find out more about working with Nourish book a demo! 

Professional development in social care is a fundamental building block for the future of our sector. Skills for Care’s ‘Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care’ details several benefits of investing in care eLearning and training. These range from driving quality care to improving your ability to recruit and retain care workers. Fundamentally, the impact of professional development in social care reverberates through every aspect of your service. At Nourish Care we appreciate that there are many white papers, plans and strategies for improving social care. The challenge lies in finding the time, energy and platform to pursue them.  

That’s why we are so excited to announce the latest member of our Nourish Partnership Programme, MyAko. MyAko are a Skills for Care and CPD accredited eLearning provider. We’ve partnered with them to deliver an all-in-one digital learning solution for home care agencies. Our platform links directly to the Nourish Rostering app. Enabling easy access for your staff and offering a streamlined way to manage training compliance. With over 100 thousand active users MyAko’s comprehensive library of courses covers a range of topics. Their platform has over 60 courses dedicated to professional development in social care, including Care Certificate, Safeguarding Adults and Children, and Moving and Handling People. Crucially, they are committed to continually developing and adding to the courses they provide.

We linked our home care rostering platform directly with MyAko to streamline your experience. This means you will have full access to a range of MyAko’s care eLearning features directly through Nourish. Shape the development of your teams by assigning and tracking courses. You can keep an eye on progress and monitor compliance throughout the duration of these courses for more organisational oversight as well as downloading certificates upon course completion. This gives you a throughline for recording, reviewing and reporting your teams training. So not only can you provide professional development in social care, you can evidence it as well.  

Signing up is as straightforward. Simply head over to the Admin eLearning section and click the “Sign Up” button to get started. Once activated you can set up Course Assignment Rules to establish mandatory courses for your team, based on your existing regions or job titles. It is also possible to set up unique training per person when it’s needed. You’ll find this option in the Individual Course Assignment section. 

You pay for courses with course credits, which can be bought directly through the platform. The cost of courses ranges from 1-3 credits depending on the topic. This gives you the flexibility to pick and pay for courses suited to your company’s needs. There is a report available for your course credit purchases as well to help you keep track of your costs. You can also establish pay settings to ensure that your teams are compensated for their learning time.  

MyAko boasts a range of courses covering a variety of relevant topics for social care. Including professional skills, safeguarding and clinical best practise. With over 60 courses to choose from you can shape your training to the needs of your community. Here are some examples. 

The Care Certificate is an agreed set of standards that define the knowledge, skills and behaviours expected of specific job roles in the health and social care sectors. Developed jointly by Skills for Care, Health Education England and Skills for Health because of the need for official certificates in our sector. The Care Certificate consists of the 15 minimum standards people considered ‘new to care’ need to cover which should form part of a robust induction programme. MyAko’s course covers the 15 standards within the Care Certificate and checks the knowledge of the learner through the end-of-module assessments.  

MyAko offers courses that are directly tied to care skills, as well as ones that help develop other professional skills necessary to provide outstanding care. The appraisals course aims to provide the learner with general knowledge surrounding staff appraisal skills and the role it plays within the workplace. This course is a combination of both theoretical knowledge and interactive activities, designed to help the candidate learn, and practice. This develops crucial leadership and management skills for your staff and helps provide a pathway for further development.  

Duty of Candour is a common expectation from all health and care providers. It requires care providers and managers to act in an open and transparent way with people receiving care or treatment from them. While this seems straightforward from the outside all carers can appreciate the delicate touch it requires. This course shows learners that promoting a culture of openness is a prerequisite to improving customer safety and the quality of our health and social care systems. Upon completion of the course, your team will be able to classify Duty of Candour and recognise best practice. Another key point is how you can distinguish between various levels of harm and associated actions and additionally which of these are notifiable safety incidents. 

We recently released a new training matrix report. This report is available to all Nourish home care users, regardless of if you sign up for the new care eLearning courses. This exportable report provides an overview of your team’s training status, as a result making it easier to track who’s completed their training and who may need a refresher. For more information about your new report, log in to your Nourish Rostering system and check out the Training Matrix Report guide found in the Help Centre. With this new report we aim to make managing your team’s learning and development more efficient and straightforward. 

Training is a crucial part of developing the future of care. It is vital we engage with professional development in social care to continue to take charge of our own sector. Empowered care teams deliver higher quality care with more job satisfaction. Investing in care eLearning can help with the recruitment and retention of your workforce as well. With Nourish and MyAko you can lay the foundations for your future success.

Find out more and sign up today! 

Time is running out to get funding for Digital Care Records in home care! The Adult Social Care Transformation Fund is available to help care providers move away from paper-based admin and digitise their social care records. It is a key part of the government’s push to have 80% of social care providers using digital social care records by March 2025. However, the deadline for new applications is the end of November 2024.

There is a concentrated effort to align health and social care in the UK, with digital systems playing a fundamental role, as outlined in the 2021 white paper Integration and Innovation.

Implementing a digital system, or going through ‘digital transformation’ as it is more commonly posed can be intimidating. But the benefits are worth the investment. Digital systems can streamline your service, reducing time spent on admin and providing you with previously unavailable insights of the care you provide. There is never enough time to do everything in social care, but digital systems can help you to focus on the things that really matter to your community.

Money makes the world go round. It’s a simple fact, one that is felt keenly in home care. For many providers, digitisation was just another ‘nice to have’ aspect of care provision they could not justify in their budgets. This has since changed as more and more care providers digitise their processes. It is clear the government is moving towards digitisation in health and care, making digital social care records a ‘need to have’. 

Fortunately, funding is available to any CQC registered care provider who has not used a digital social care record before. The funding is provided by your local Integrated Care System and the approved list of digital suppliers can be found on the Assured Solutions List. While funding varies between ICSs it generally covers 50% or more of your first year licence. 

“The Adult Social Care Transformation Fund has been a great enabler for providers as they embark on their digital journeys”, explained Nourish Care’s Head of Partnerships, Denise Tack. “The funding alleviates the initial up-front implementation costs of going digital. It allows providers to rapidly gain access to essential care delivery tools such as GP Connect and eRedbag. Being able to carry a care plan in your pocket is highly transformational. Most of our customers tell me they could never go back to paper!”

At Nourish we are well-versed in supporting care providers to succeed in gaining this funding, and our experience can help make all the difference when working on the reduced timelines new applicants now face. We have helped providers across all of the ICSs and we would be happy to help you too. Reach out to us with your postcode and we will give you the relevant contact details for your local ICS. 

Once you have reached out to your local ICS they will send you a form to fill out for funding. We are on hand if you need advice while completing the application form.

It is important to note that in order to be eligible for funding care providers need to be CQC registered to support adults, be DSPT compliant, have NHS mail and be currently using paper.

We have written previously about the benefits of switching from paper to digital processes. Digitisation impacts social care. Both at its fundamental level of point of care, as well as its regulatory level of decision-making. The future of a more integrated health and social care system lies in digital processes. Information sharing brings us closer together without sacrificing our privacy. Digital social care records are at the heart of that. And with the right funding, the right system, and the right support, you can be too.

Want to find out more about the funding or have any questions answered?

Reach out to us at hello@nourishcare.com, call us on 023 8000 2288 or book a demo of Nourish here.

Tis the season to be jolly, spread cheer and eat plenty! The festive period is the perfect chance for some fun-filled Christmas activities. We have put together a list of suggestions for your seasonal celebrations! 

If you are looking for more activity ideas, all year round, make sure you check out our monthly Activity Planners! 

Get yourself in the spirit by decorating your home. There are creative ways to work around the varying abilities of the people you support, such as asking those who spend a lot of time in their bedroom to choose a decoration or using aids such as wheelchairs to enable the people you support to get involved. Host crafting sessions to create your own fun decorations as well!  

Look into local groups and try to arrange musical guests to come for a seasonal show! Local youth groups, community choirs and theatre troupes often have special shows at this time of year. Ask if they will come to perform at your home 

A Christmas classic can always be a delight. This season is timeless so you can enjoy films from across generations. With so many options to choose, from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ to ‘Love Actually’ there are options for everyone! Add an extra layer of comfort with snacks and hot chocolate. 

Design and make your own Christmas cards to share with your circles of care. Festive activities take many forms and sharing cards is the perfect way to express your creativity. Plus you can send some heartfelt messages to the important people in your wider community!

Christmas jumpers come in all shapes and sizes, just like care communities. Share your brightest (and boldest) Christmas jumpers! Local schools and business community groups may be hosting their own Christmas jumper days, see if you can share your best pics! 

It’s not a holiday without treats! Host baking sessions where people can participate in making cookies, gingerbread houses, or decorating cupcakes. The scents of freshly baked goods evoke nostalgia and create a warm, homely ambience. 

Gift-giving is a fundamental part of the season and one of the most enjoyable festive activities. The joy and love we share with each other can lift our spirits on the shortest days. Organise a Christmas shopping trip for a fun day out. Then come home and make sure you wrap them up well! Secret Santa is a fantastic way to make sure everyone is involved and excited.  

Christmas quizzing is a modern British tradition! They are a brilliant way to keep the mind active and engaged. You can shape your topics to the knowledge of your community and give everyone a chance to show off in each round!  

Change is an uncertain thing by design. We grow and improve through change, but that does not mean we always know exactly how. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is in a transitional period. A period whose challenges reverberate across the social care sector and beyond, raising hopes, but also questions. We recently hosted a CQC webinar where Chris Day, CQC’s Director of Engagement, answered the most prominent questions submitted by Nourish Care users. As put to him by our Director of Customer Success, Ruth Norman.  

We learned of an organisation adapting to the needs of its community and building for the future. An organisation with enough self-awareness to recognise the mistakes it’s made, and the vision to correct them in the continuing pursuit of their person-centred, technology-enabled, ambitions.  

“The next steps of this journey for us is very much working with you so you and our colleagues who inspect have a really clear and collective understanding of what good looks like.” – Chris Day, Director of Engagement, CQC 

The CQC webinar was exclusively for Nourish users. We selected some of Chris Day’s most prominent insights below.  

If you are interested in joining Nourish and working with regulators, commissioners and communities to build the future of social care together, book a demo today. 

At the heart of the new inspection framework is a realisation. The CQC felt they were too focused on processes, not outcomes. The new approach focuses on outcomes, on the voice of the people and using the service and the staff supporting them. ‘I’ statements are designed to reflect what an individual expects from their service, and the ‘We’ statements illustrate how a service responds to those expectations. The CQC are eager to connect the dots between services with their new assessment framework. However, they acknowledge the work needed to refine how ratings translate across the 18 sectors they regulate and want to work with providers to address this. 

Chris highlighted the importance of re-establishing the link between providers and their local inspectors. He admitted the CQC overlooked the importance of these relationships when establishing the single assessment framework. The quality of these local relationships is crucial for building trust. They will launch a series of pilot programmes for local inspector hubs in October 2024 and will share further information for attendees through Nourish. The CQC want to give people the ability to talk to their inspectors without an inspection. To know and understand their inspectors through continued engagement. To build trust at a local level and share best practise.   

“A manifestation of care planning reality,” said Chris.  The biggest delineator of ratings comes down to the extent providers understand the issues they face. Including those outside their control, and crucially, what they are doing to address them. They want providers to show the relationship between the care planning, the training, the way observations are taken and the way support is given. It is important to give your team the confidence to connect data and information with people’s lived experiences. And the comprehension to explain those connections to inspectors. It’s not about providing a wealth of raw data. Care plans are more than a box-ticking exercise. How you tell the narrative story matters.  

Specifically, during our CQC webinar, Chris advised providers to use ‘edge’ or ‘outlier’ cases. Rather than a uniform overview of similar care plans. The new framework focuses on how a care plan reflects how you deliver care. How the person utilising support and their family experiences the care and how the specifics of your service’s context shape the care. Show the journey.  

First and foremost, it is important to understand the portal has several different functions. Chris spoke about the registration, notification and assessment functions during our CQC webinar. Fundamentally, the technology behind the portal isn’t working in the way they wanted. While notifications are functioning and will continue to do so, registration and factual accuracy checks are not. The CQC recognise how important it is to keep these services running, and so will be reverting to the pre-portal approach for both. Those who have completed or nearly completed their registration through the portal will not need to redo it in the old fashion, while those earlier in the process will be supported to switch methods. They are building out their registration team to expedite this process. Further information will be shared with Nourish users shortly.  

“I think we’ve let you down in terms of the time it takes to process registrations and take forward inspections,” said Chris. Addressing this swiftly is the key motivator for moving back to the older systems. They will be able to increase the number of registrations and inspections they conduct by returning to systems they are familiar with.  

The CQC looks to divide registrations between complex and ‘transactional’ needs, to help resolve simpler registration requests quickly. They will still use the quality statements for inspections, rather than key lines of enquiry, with the older process. “We know we had higher productivity pre covid with the inspection approach we took,” explained Chris. 

 The priority of inspections going forward for the CQC is ‘to form a view of the quality that someone who is going to use that service can expect’. They are currently undertaking modelling for inspection timelines and rates and are expecting to finish the modelling in November. Once the modelling is completed the CQC will share it with Nourish and providers. 

Naturally there was apprehension in our chat about the order of urgency of inspections. While the priority will be on addressing known harm, uninspected newly registered services and services ranked poorly who have had time to improve, Chris acknowledges the need to focus on inspections that show the positive changes providers have implemented. They are growing teams and their use of clinical experts to increase their inspection capacity. 

For those uncertain about how long this will take it is important to remember, when key lines of enquiry were first brought in, the CQC inspected every service in their charge over three years.  

Currently there are a range of experience and comfort levels with care technology in their workforce. A major part of inspector training is to ensure they understand the technology available to providers. Something they are eager to work with Nourish on developing.  Chris acknowledges the significant role technology can play in helping the CQC establish a ‘common view of quality in adult social care’.  

Data is a huge opportunity for care. Normally data is centred on the NHS. Access to real time information increases the understanding of care and service performance. Which in turn drives positive change. Bringing commonality to how data defines quality care is no easy feat, and there is a journey still to go on. However, Chris knows from previous work that data information is often at the heart of positive changes organisations have made and it has an important part to play in shaping the future of health and care. Including conversations about the long-term funding of health and care. 

As the hour drew to a close we posed a selection of questions from the session to Chris. Here is a brief overview of his responses. 

The CQC plans to review their inspection ratings in the near future. Their goal is always to triangulate data to get a full picture of the quality of a service. The primary goal being to establish these ratings as a more narrative description of the care you can inspect, rather than simply a ‘score’. 

The provider ‘handbook’ for inspections was recently approved. Over the next four to eight weeks the CQC will engage with providers to develop it. 

Understanding risk is crucial to justifying it. With specific regard to concerns over how the CQC will review potentially risky activities that increase quality of life for people drawing on support. This reiterates the need to rebuild trust between providers and inspectors Chris discussed earlier in the CQC webinar.  

Their ambition for Local Authority inspections to relate to provider inspections. The CQC are committed to providing further context for provider inspections by better understanding the worlds in which they operate.  

“That’s my ambition,” concluded Chris. “It’s not where we are at the moment, but I’d really like to do that. I’m happy to come back and talk about the Local Authority stuff moving forward.” 

The CQC are building for the future. But in order to do that they know they have to rebuild trust with the adult social care sector. There remains a great deal of work ahead of all of us to achieve the ambitions of the regulator and providers alike. Ultimately, we are all unified in our vision of better, more person-centred, care.  

Nourish are committed to working with everyone involved in the process, so we can change with confidence and drive better outcomes as a result. Join Nourish today to avail of future CQC webinars, integrated innovations and community led care technology.

Care Show Birmingham is the biggest show in the social care calendar. The bright lights of the NEC illuminating a sector alive with possibilities. For two days in October every year great minds, generous hearts and novel innovations emerge and are celebrated. 2024 was the biggest yet and reflected a growing sector with plenty to discuss. Across several stages, throughout vibrant thoroughfares, and on two floors people gathered to share their experiences, and their aspirations, for social care. 

This year we wanted to make our stand a welcoming place for our users, as well as an inviting one for new customers.  

Our upper deck was reserved for meetings between Nourish Care users and their dedicated Success and Account Managers. A relaxing space above the noise of the show to have in-depth, in person, discussions over tea and biscuits.  

On the ground, we created a space for learning and experience sharing. Featuring special guests from the Nourish Partnership Programme including Altra, e-reception book and Professional Records Standards Body as well as sessions exploring our Insights functionality and CQC preparation. 

We also had a space for carers to relax and receive a complimentary hand or foot massage. So, folks could take a break from the thoroughfare. 

The Leaders in Care Awards are a standout celebration in the social care calendar. The event brings the glitz, glamour and gratitude to the night before Care Show Birmingham every year. 

This year several Nourish users were up for awards and we were delighted to be cheering them on. A huge congratulations to all the nominees and winners at the events 

Kingsway Care who won ‘Innovation in Homecare’ 
Samantha Crawley of Bracebridge Care Group who won ‘Executive of the Year’ 
The Northam Care Trust for winning ‘Care Home Provider of the Year’ 

We also want to extend our sincere celebrations to the other Nourish nominees on the night: Barchester Healthcare, The Orders of St John Care Trust (OSJCT), Sanctuary Care, Four Seasons Health Care, CareYourWay and Abicare Services. 

Nourish sponsored two awards at the event. ‘Frontline Carer of the Year’ in home care and ‘Registered Manager of the Year’ for Care Homes. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to both winners. 
Quality Life UK‘s Leanne Smith-Bodycot for ‘Frontline Carer of the Year’  
Care UK‘s Tony Sturgess for ‘Registered Manager of the Year’  

Congratulations to all of the winners on the night! Also, thank you to Apollo Care, Community Integrated Care, Sanctuary and National Care Group for joining us at our tables and sharing in the festivities! 

We sponsored the Care Keynote stage as part of this year’s festivities. The shared conversations and sessions covered a range of topics. Helping to spread experiences and insights across the social care community.  

Several talks looked to the future of social care. Skills for Care’s Dr Jane Brightman took us through their state of social care and workforce report. Detailing the numbers of care, the people behind them and the potential we all have. Prominent leaders took to the stage to explore what the future holds for care under a new government. The regulator was naturally a popular subject for discussion, with a range of speakers sharing their insights into continuous improvement and preparing for inspections. We also had the CQC themselves join us for an update.  

The second day of Care Show Birmingham ended with the inspiring 30 under 30 Awards. It was incredible to see the future leaders and present champions of care together on stage. We want to send a particular shout out to our friends who were nominated.  

Faizan Broughton, Service Leader for Community Integrated Care 
Elizabeth Court, Company Secretary for Nexus Care Services  

At Nourish it is not in our nature to stand by and let the important conversations happen without us. We took to the keynote stage on each day of the show to share the perspectives of our team and users on digital care technology.  

Our Chief Product Officer Matthew Stewart led this panel. He was joined by:  
Gary Laville, Group Quality and Governance Director – Salutem Care 
Laura Brooks, Care Quality Director – Order of St John Care Trust (OSJCT) 
Mike Cleasby, Chief Quality and Risk Officer – National Care Group 

The panel discussed the transformative impact of digital tools like Nourish on care quality. Some of the key points discussed focused on improved staff behaviour, enhanced report writing, and the benefits they’ve experienced since shifting from paper to digital platforms. With specific reference to positive outcomes for reduced acute care, improved quality of life, and significant changes in clinical outcomes, such as managing epilepsy through data-driven interventions. The panel also talked about what their future plans held. Their ambitions for AI integrations for predictive analysis, developing dependency tools, and enhancing family engagement through the family portal. The discussion emphasized the ability for digital tools to free up time for caregivers and improve overall care efficiency. But it also went into the importance of real-time data and transparency, and how they can drive incredible changes in care delivery processes. 

On the second day our Chief Customer Officer Paul Barnes took to the Care Keynote stage. Kingsley Healthcare’s Co-Chief Operations Officer, Debbie McGovern, joined Paul to discuss the benefits of changing your digital platform.  

Kingsley, a family-run business with 38 homes, is a digital innovator. They began their digital journey in 2011, moving to Nourish last year after spending 6 years using their previous system.  They have since improved their care plan management and data accuracy, reducing contradictory information and CQC issues. The migration involved transferring data and devices. An understandable concern for any digitised provider as it is akin to ‘changing the tires on a moving car’. Kingsley were able to transition systems in a smooth fashion with support from the Nourish team. Now they are working well with Nourish and have plans to further innovate their information oversight. Showing digital transformation is an active endeavor, and one with many benefits for circles of care and wider care communities.  

If you’d like to read more about Kingsley’s journey with Nourish, check out our Case Study! 

Our Chief Marketing Officer Lee Gilbert and our Clinical Lead Carrie Taylor joined The Outstanding Society Learning Lounge for two of their sessions as well. 

Lee took part in a roundtable on diversity. A spirited exchange of ideas and experiences. The shape of the setup reflected the nature of the conversations minorities are so frequently left out of. The shape of the conversation reflected just how much we are all losing out as a result.  

Carrie Taylor took part in a discussion on ‘Enhancing clinical governance through effective data management’. Samantha Crawley, Director & CEO – The Outstanding Society and Bracebridge Care led the discussion. Ruth French, Operations Director of Stow Healthcare and Tandeep Gill, Head of Business Development for Painchek joined alongside. The talk centred on how data can be more effectively applied in care. With a wealth of information available to us, we need to discern the best places to apply it. Clinical governance is a crucial part of quality care and information is power. The panel concluded data can play a key role in the future of clinical governance, but we must be precise and understanding in how we move forward. 

Care Show Birmingham is always worth a visit. This year we at Nourish wanted to focus on our users and create spaces and conversations we would all grow from. We are delighted with the results and are heading home both tired from the exertion and energised by the experience. See you at the next one!  

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The biggest show of the social care calendar is right around the corner, Care Show Birmingham. The biggest show attracts the biggest names for the most important conversations. This year we are sponsoring the Care Keynote Stage and we are so excited!  

We have a wealth of experience and insight on display throughout Thursday. Of course, the best is saved for the Care Keynote Stage. We contacted the speakers taking to the keynote stage for some sneak previews of what they will cover. From present challenges to future opportunities, there are many great talks, and only one place to see them. 

While you’re visiting the show make sure to come say hi to us on stand G40!

Here’s our Nourish insight into the speakers on the Care Keynote Stage on Day 2, Thursday 10^th October. 

10:15 – 11:00 
Speakers
Karolina Gerlich, CEO, Care Workers Charity 
George Appleton, Head of External Affairs, Social Care Institute of Excellence 
Vic Raynor, Chief Executive Officer, National Care Forum 
Nadra Ahmed, Executive Chairman, National Care Association

2024 is a year of change in the UK. With a new Labour government in power it is natural for us to wonder what form those changes will take for the social care sector. Between election promises, King’s speeches and party conferences, we have heard many people from outside social care talk about what the future holds. Join this panel of prominent social care leaders as the discuss what this future might hold for us. 

“As the new government begin to make good on their manifesto commitments. None are more important than securing a sustainable social care system. Social care is a critical part of our national infrastructure. Securing its sustainability is in the national interest with more people requesting support. But fewer getting the help they need.” – George Appleton, Head of External Affairs – SCIE 

“In terms of the future of social care with the new government in place. We need to support efforts to reform the sector. With a strong focus on the workforce and ensuring care workers’ voices are heard. For me, the future of social care is all about empowering the people who do the job. Allowing them to excel and feel well in themselves. When care workers are supported and well, they deliver their best work.” – Karolina Gerlich, CEO – The Care Workers’ Charity 

11:15 – 11:45 
Speaker
Paul Barnes, Chief Customer Officer, Nourish Care

Digital social care records are a common sight in care providers across the UK. A testament to the success of the Digital Social Care led Assured Solutions List initiative. Now that the dust is settled on the rapid digitisation of the sector, providers can look to their horizons with clarity and ask themselves, am I set up to succeed in the future? Our Chief Customer Officer Paul Barnes will be leading a session that details how joining Nourish has transformed care provider’s approach to care, with specific examples from our customers.  

“Digital care systems offer a range of possibilities to care providers. At Nourish we have been working with providers for over a decade to help shape our system and improve their outcomes. We delight in working with care providers and producing solutions that help improve the lived experience of care for everyone in their community. Join me on the Care Keynote Stage as I detail how Nourish Care drives improved outcomes, care quality and delivery, with examples and evidence from our users.” 

12:00 – 12:45 
Speaker
Jane Brightman, Director of Workforce Strategy, Skills for Care

This year Skills for Care led the charge in developing, for the first time ever, a workforce strategy that is designed by the care sector itself, bringing together key figures and findings from across the sector. Adult social care needs a workforce strategy to ensure we have enough of the right people with the right skills to provide the best possible care and support for the people who draw on it. Three months on from its official launch the director of the workforce strategy Jane Brightman will be taking to the Care Keynote Stage to share the impact, and ambition, of the strategy. 

“I’m going to be talking about how we got here. The thinking and development that took place and how we got to the launch of the workforce strategy. I’ll also go through what the last 3 months have been like since the launch and how we plan to continue forward with our implementation of the strategy.”  

13:00 – 13:30
Speaker
Ian Pritchard, Chief Executive Officer, Alternative Futures Group

Alternative Futures Group is a leading North West health and social care charity that delivers exceptional person-centred support. Operating two established businesses in learning disability and autism services, and specialist mental health rehabilitation, the organisation is going from strength to strength. Their Chief Executive Officer will be taking to the Care Keynote Stage to share their journey and their plans for the future. The session will focus on: The charity’s turnaround strategy, with a specific focus on workforce engagement, enhanced service quality and modernisation. How AFG has navigated to take the charity into a consistent, sustained surplus position to facilitate investment. Ian will close with an explanation of how the charity aims to deliver its growth strategy despite the ongoing (and potential future) sector challenges. 

13:45 – 14:30 
Speaker
James Bullion, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care, Care Quality Commission

The CQC is always a subject of popular discussion in social care. The best source for information is a primary one. So, don’t miss out on this opportunity for an update directly from their Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care James Bullion.  

14:45 – 15:45
Host  
Big Ian Donaghy

Hosted by Big Ian, the 30 under 30 awards are a celebration of the rising stars and emerging talent in social care. The award show is always an entertaining and encouraging experience and is a fantastic way to close the Care Keynote Stage. 

“The Care Show is proud to host the Thirty under 30 awards at Care Show Birmingham in October. Highlighting the amazing youth within the sector is key to firstly acknowledge the great work they are doing consistently as these will be the leaders of social care in the future.” Matthew Moore, Show Manager – Care Show Birmingham 

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