When it comes to understanding care planning sometimes its best to start at the beginning. That’s why we’ve designed this Care Planning 101 series to help. This week we’ll be starting from the beginning and helping you to understand what care plans are, what care planning involves and how it helps you to provide people with the right care for their own individual requirements.

A plan of care is a presentation of information that easily describes the services and support being given to a person. Care plans should be put together and agreed with the person they focus on through the process of care planning and review. A care plan is made up from individual records of care, which then contribute to the overall plan of care for a person.

Care plans are an essential aspect to providing gold standard quality care. Not only do they help define the support & care workers’ roles in providing consistent care, but they enable the care team to customise the level and types of support for each person based on their individual needs.

Another important function or purpose of care plans is to ensure the consistency of care a person receives. If a robust care plan is in place, staff from different shifts, rotas or visits can use the information to give the same quality of care and support. This allows people to receive a high standard of safe, effective and responsive care in a service which is well-led.

Every person is unique. A one-size-fits-all approach does not effectively work.  Care teams responsible for the actual delivery of care need to be constantly vigilant and be immediately responsive should there be any indication of a person’s changing needs. This could be increased or decreased and make sure that the plan of care is amended and updated as necessary, not waiting for the formal regular routine review to take place.

Using a care plan software can enhance your care plans, giving you deeper oversight into your care home as well as the care planning app giving your care teams the ability to record care on the go and have all the essential information about the people you support in one place.

If you’d like to find out more about how Nourish can help you effectively manage your care plans and care pathways, book a personalised demo with our team today.

Now working with over 500 care providers across the UK, we’ve been lucky to meet with so many fantastic organisations that are looking to go electronic with their care management.

Coming into 2019, we know that many more organisations are looking to make the same change, particularly with the latest NHS Long Term Plan’s focus on a better, more connected relationship with social care through the use of integrated technology. We thought we’d share with you the answers to the 5 top questions we’re asked as an digital care management provider:

Nourish was designed to be simple to learn.

When the development process started at Nourish, we made the conscious decision of giving extra weight to the design behind the solution rather than purely thinking of adding features. The thought behind this was simple but essential: if a system is too complex, it’ll demand too much time, cause frustration in the user and ultimately, not be used.

Our care management system was created to be used by the frontline care team – which is why we created the innovative concept of the Nourish Timeline. This is a daily log of care interactions for each person you support, which allows you to have better visibility over what care is being provided, what care needs an individual has and how they would like to be supported.

A very important aspect of this user focus has to do with the connection between care plans and the timeline. Instead of purely converting paper data to digital, Nourish links the relevant care plan information according to the care interaction; this means that care plans can be accessed at the point of care.

For example, you can learn an individual’s likes, dislikes and outcome plans for their nutrition when providing breakfast. Or an agency staff member can read someone’s shared personal biography before they start caring for them; not only allowing for a richer social experience but also ensuring they provide care in line with the individual’s preferences.

Frontline Care Teams are trained to use the timelines in small group sessions, which typically last up to an hour. This allows time for people to learn the 3-step process of using the timeline, understand where they can find important information and have a ‘test play’ to start building confidence. The basic, 3-step process of the timeline can be taught in 10-minutes for agency staff who are simply coming in to use the timeline for the day and record information. This ensures that there is minimal disruption to a busy care service day.

As with all new technology, confidence develops over time from consistent use. Recording care information electronically at the point of care becomes a natural aspect of the carer’s workload and they are supported with better access to important care information; notes are recorded to inform better care, rather than simply to be compliant.

“It’s better than sitting down with paperwork. I thought it would be hard, but it’s like using your own phone,” “It’s very easy. You find all the information that you want, it’s there. Now we have time to talk to residents” – comments from a recent CQC report.

When presenting Nourish for the first time, training and the implementation process can be a key concern.  Understandably, this is mostly because moving to an electronic system is a considerable change in an often otherwise paper-based environment. There is also concern regarding staff who may have little to no experience with digital technology – which is considered and prioritised in our training process.

The implementation process usually takes two months and goes as follows:

Firstly, you as the care provider decide whether you would like to use our standardised templates, which have been built specifically for different types of care, or whether you would like to continue with your current documents and templates.

Should you choose to use your own, we will ask that you send us blank copies of all of your documentation – forms, assessments, care plans – and we will build these into the platform so they’re ready to use on day one.

Secondly, is training for you and your team. We break down our training into two separate sections; the timeline training and the care plan training.

Timeline training comes first and this is where you get 80% of the return for 20% of the effort. In small group sessions, we teach your team how to use and get the most from the timelines, where you will record your daily notes.

Care plan training takes place four to six weeks later, to provide you with the opportunity to familiarise and gain confidence in using the timelines and ask any questions that arise. The care plan training is a more in-depth training that is provided to key members of your team who will be involved in care plan writing and reviews and the administration and upkeep of the system.

From this point onwards you will be able to fully switch to digital, should that suit your service. Some care providers choose to gradually move from paper to digital and we are happy to support whichever approach you choose.

We continuously monitor your usage of the system remotely to keep an eye on progress, but also to ensure you’re using the system to the best of its ability. We are always releasing new client-led developments and we want to make sure you’re aware of, and using, these new features.

You’ll have ongoing access to our awesome support team and you can drop us a message on the Nourish Support at any time, should you have any questions.  We focus on continuous improvement, to stay fresh and dynamic, so we believe that going digital is not the end goal, but an ongoing process for which we are here to support.

The time it takes to move information can vary greatly depending on a number of different factors. For instance, the amount of information you choose to move over, how far back you move information over and who you assign to be involved in the transition.

We have worked with a number of care organisations who approach this is in different ways, so we would be more than happy to discuss the different options with you, to find the approach that suits your environment best.

The simple answer is that we offer both.

One of our key focus points is the ability to be flexible and customisable. No individuals or care providers are the same and that means our software needs to be able to support a variety of different ways of working.

We can and do offer templates based on best practice, past research and experience and direction from industry consultants. These can support care organisations who are looking for a starting template or a standard template they can build on.

On the other side, care providers can build their own templates and care plan structures into Nourish – from the beginning, it has been designed to support how you already work, rather than forcing you to work in a different way.

Whichever approach you take, Nourish still offers in-depth granularity on individualising the recording of care. For example, you can personalise at group level (e.g. policies and procedures), at service or home level (e.g. a community service within a group of care homes), at the individual level (e.g. unique care plan format for someone in palliative care), daily level (e.g. Maggie prefers to only have showers on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), and even interaction level (e.g. each resident can have the interaction ‘Breakfast’, but Frank prefers his toast with extra butter).

There is a reason CQC doesn’t enforce specific templates, but rather focuses on the KLOE approach; care needs to be evidenced and documented, but it also needs to be unique to each organisation, the type of care they provide and the person they’re caring for. We work hard to make sure that can all be supported.

As a data handler of important, personal and medical records, our security has always been a critical focus. We have been registered with the ICO since 2014 and are fully GDPR compliant. All of our servers, including backups, are physically located in the UK  and your data is encrypted both in transit and at rest in our AWS data servers. In 2018, we also received the Cyber Essentials accreditation.

One of the main advantages of going digital is the instant access to all of your data, simultaneously by different users. At the device level, we use Device Management to manage remote access for different roles. We also have access permissions which allows you as a care organisation to control who has access to what information. Through the Device Management System, we are able to geolocate individual devices, lock down handsets and remotely control and update them.

The care providers we work with understand that first and foremost we’re not a ‘tech’ company, but rather a company that understands how technology can be used to enhance the provision of care teams and empower care teams with better access to information, better use of information and less time on paperwork.

Our key differentiator lies in three areas: adaptability, ease-of-use and exceptional ongoing support.

As above, Nourish was designed to be flexible to how different people work. Each care provider we work with approaches their care records slightly differently, and we ensure we facilitate that. Whether that be different uses of terminology, different forms, assessments or specific care plan structures; all of these can be created in Nourish to reflect how your team or organisation works.

By focusing on user experience and design, we have created a system that is simple to use – but still has the incredible complexity and intelligence it needs to work in such a diverse sector. We strongly believe that technology should be enjoyable to use – we want care teams to want to use Nourish, so that they record better, more rich information and this leads to a better experience of care for the individual. We focus on electronic care planning and care recording and we’re experts in what we do – everything is done in house, from design to development all the way to training and support, so we always have the expertise on hand to answer questions or resolve new challenges.

We truly pride ourselves on our ongoing support and you really don’t have to take our word for it – check out some of the incredible feedback our support team had at the end of last year. Our approach to support is: “To provide our clients with a consistently premium experience. We want our clients to enjoy talking with us and to feel that their issue has been respected, acknowledged and dealt with promptly. At all times, we have to be patient, understanding and explain in as much detail as is needed.”

I hope these answers are helpful to you in making the decision to move to electronic care planning and if you have any other questions, book a personalised demo with our team today.

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A Seamless Handover

Digital transformation in the care sector is no longer the future and the benefits of the technological revolution have been felt far and wide across the sector.

Despite this, and the numerous benefits that technologies have shown in all areas of care, we are still seeing some reluctance towards digital transformation. While there is a common misconception that this is down to many care professionals fearing technology, this is simply not the case.

Past research from Skills for Care revealed that 95% of those working in the sector use digital technology in their work; and that the great majority are strongly positive about the potential of digital technology to improve efficiency and quality of care services. We also know that digital transformations are occurring, because we work with care providers up and down the country who are looking to digitise their care records every day.

It is, therefore, not the fear of technology that acts as the barrier, but, in fact, the fear of change.

In our experience, there is a clear misunderstanding between what the perceived barriers are to adopting technology, versus what the actual barriers are.

Few worry about job automation. There are many instances where advancements in technology remove the need for physical people – you only need to go to your local supermarket to see self-service check-outs, or go online to realise how much of your daily life you can manage without interacting with a person.

In the care sector, however, suggestions that Pepper the Robot will eventually replace carers are disregarded because there are two key things that computers cannot impersonate: social intelligence and emotional interpretation. The adoption of technology in care is not about replacing human interaction, but facilitating more of it through time-saving.

In contrast, the biggest barrier that we do hear care providers talk about is their concern that their staff will not have the necessary skills or inclination to adopt technology. In reality, we actually find the opposite is true.

According to Skills for Care’s The State of the Adult Social Care Sector and Workforce in England, 2017, the average age of a care worker is 43 and a fifth are aged over 55. Data from Statista shows that in these age groups, smartphone ownership is at 88% and 47% respectively. So, the physical use of technology is not alien. With a new younger generation of care workers coming into the sector, all of whom have grown up using technology, confidence in ability is only likely to increase.

The level of notes we have to record in care is often a point of contention and this can also act as a barrier. However, the fact of the matter is that we have to record notes, because without doing so, we have no method of evidencing care. After all, ‘if it wasn’t written down, it didn’t happen’.

It’s not about working out how we can get away with recording less information, but instead how we can improve the amount of high-quality information we record in the least amount of time. This is exactly what digital solutions allow you to do.

Further to this, technology also allows you to make use of all of that recorded information, so that it can be better used to directly benefit care; rather than being filed away in a locked room.

The problem, usually, is not care team capability or the use of the actual technology, but how the digital transformation process is approached, and the tools and support provided during this process.

Going from paper to electronic care notes and care plans is not just a change in the physical process, but also to the content that is recorded. As a result, the approach to managing the change must address culture as much as technology.

In the latest issue of Care Management Matters, our Head of Digital Transformation, Luis Zenha Rela, explains how care providers can implement an effective change management process.

You can read the full article online here.

Digital transformation will never be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ scenario, and the power of technology comes just as much from how it is integrated as the functions of the technology itself.

Embrace this innovation, choose the right solution for you and give special consideration to the change management process, and you might be surprised by how much technology can enhance the quality of care your service provides.

Get to grips with the fundamentals of care plans and care recording. This post in our Care Planning 101 series covers how you can work towards improving your care recording processes. We all know that record keeping is an integral part of providing great care, keeping good records is not optional, and that the quality of your record keeping can reflect the standard of your professional care practice.

Robust record keeping is a mark of skilled and safe carers, whereas careless and incomplete record keeping often highlights wider issues. Great record keeping helps to protect the welfare of people in care and support services, the question is;

CQC has set out a whole host of different guidelines and recommendations when it comes to care planning. For a full in-depth set of resources, we’d always recommend you visit the CQC website to ensure you’re up to date. Having said that, as a clear starter we’d advise that care records must present information that is:

*Remember this reflects a commitment to person-centred care, equality & diversity principles

Recording care notes via pen and paper has been the accepted norm within the care industry, however, in light of the recent Covid-19 pandemic, digital care planning is becoming the new norm, offering greater efficiency, infection control, and more in-depth analysis of those being supported. The CQC and other regulatory bodies are now becoming more aware of the necessity of updating guidelines to enforce their use (in line with their 2021 vision). Systems like Nourish empower carers during care recording by,

If you’d like to find out more about how Nourish can help you improve your care planning and recording processes, then give us a call on 02380 002 288, or alternatively, you can book a personalised demonstration with our team today.

Let’s face it, when you work in care there can seem to be an overwhelming number of different buzzwords, jargon and acronyms involved in the information you get given. This is especially true when you look at the practices involved with providing people with good quality care. Today we’re going to be looking into integrated person-centred care planning – we’ll help you to demystify the term and try to encourage you to adopt the practices it involves into your care provision.

To begin with we’ll be looking at what “person-centred” actually means in regards to care. Simply put, it’s a shortened way of expressing the creation of a series of activities aligned to specifically cater for a person and their requirements. In a way it’s how you choose to culminate your care pathways & activities in a bespoke manner to provide someone with actions, activities and results that are focused totally on the individual. 

Person-centred, applies to care planning, when you take into account the clinical, holistic, desires, needs and wants of person when creating their care plans. It doesn’t stop there, however and in order to be truly person-centred, care plans must be created collaboratively with the person in control of the care interventions they want to accept, how they wish to receive them and designed to enable the person at every opportunity.

Here’s where things get a bit trickier. In order to provide integrated person-centred care planning, care professionals from all areas need to work together in order to ensure that the person in care has a seamless provision of their care, no matter the setting. When you have a person whose care requires the interventions from a variety of different social care and healthcare organisations, this can become fairly complex and has only realistically been achievable with the introduction of electronic health records and electronic care planning systems.

Here at Nourish we focus firmly on empowering person-centred care for those who provide and are in care. You can read more about our vision in our recent article on “framing personhood to manage frailty, needs and wants” from our founder Nuno Almeida. It’s why we’ve designed the Nourish system from the ground up to help enable people to receive tailored care and empower carers to do just that.

Nourish’s care planning system helps care workers, care teams, care managers and senior care providers with person-centred care planning by:

Our team of experts are always happy to help talk through how the Nourish system empowers care teams and care providers – talk to us today to find out more.