Care Planning 101 Archives

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.

What is a care plan?

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.

What does care planning involve?

Gathering and sharing stories of the clients you work with
A systematic review of a person’s needs
Exploring and discussing information to help establish what’s most important
Goal setting and working out what you’d like to achieve from an individual’s care
Action planning – What are we going to do? Who is responsible? When will it be reviewed?
Risk Management – how do we make a person’s care as safe as we can?

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.

Care planning ensures consistency of care

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.

How do care plans help care teams deliver care?

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.

How can Nourish help your care planning?

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.

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;

How do you know if your care records are fit for purpose?

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:

Sufficiently detailed to enable proper care
Clear and concise
Relevant to providing a person’s care
Accurate and factual
Objective
Non-discriminatory and non-judgemental*

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

How can you improve your care recording?

Be self-aware
Always think and ask yourself, would I be happy to read this report if it were written about me or my loved one?
Don’t guess
Only write down only what you directly experience and know to be true, not your assumptions or guesses.
Be specific
Avoid vague language, for example, “I found Mary crying today” is better than “Mary seemed upset” as it accurately describes your experiences.
Accurately describe your actions
Recording “I helped Vera to dress by fastening her buttons” is better than “carried out care tasks” and is of far higher value.
Be polite at all times
Avoid using offensive terms and phrases no matter the circumstances.
Do not ‘label’ a person
Avoid using words that label a person such as “Max is an aggressive person”.
Ensure you’re always relevant
Choose carefully what to record and consider both care needs and outcome-related requirements.
Consider who you are writing about
Describe them in a way that meets their individual needs, always ask yourself: “Is what I am writing acceptable to the person I am writing about?”
Write accurately and factually about behaviour
Describe the behaviour first, for example, “Val was banging on the table” and then note the person’s feelings; “This was because she was bored and not supported with meaningful occupation” instead of just writing “Val was aggressive” for instance.

How can you improve your care recording processes?

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,

Speeding up the process of care note-taking for carers means that even more care records are taken (Carers using Nourish have just recorded over a million care notes in under 4 months)
This increase in efficiency allows carers to add far more detail whilst care recording, and results in better care provision as carers are more informed
Care managers are able to have a complete overview into the care recording processes of the teams they manage, therefore measures can be taken to help improve staff performance and define higher quality training requirements

How can you find out more?

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.

The care sector is crammed full of different acronyms all of which clamour for your attention as a care provider. One of the most basic and the most important are KLOEs. Over the next coming weeks and months our Care Planning 101 series will focus on each of the KLOEs in more detail, to improve your understanding as a care provider and help you to provide better care.

This article will review what KLOEs means and what you need to look into in order to meet your requirements set by regulators like CQC.

KLOEs stands for “Key Lines of Enquiry” and covers the various different areas, which regulatory bodies such as CQC will investigate when they come to do an inspection of your care setting.

What are the Key Lines of Enquiry?

The key lines of enquiry can be broken down into 5 different areas:

Safe – it means that people are protected from abuse and avoidable harm.
Effective – that people’s care and support achieves good outcomes, promotes a good quality of life and is based on the best available evidence.
Caring – staff involve and treat people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
Responsive – means that services are organised so that they meet people’s needs.
Well-led – By well-led, we mean that the leadership, management and governance of the organisation assures the delivery of high-quality person-centred care, supports learning and innovation, and promotes an open and fair culture.

Why does CQC use KLOEs?

According to CQC they use KLOEs, “To direct the focus of their inspection, our inspection teams use a standard set of key lines of enquiry (KLOEs) that directly relate to the five key questions we ask of all services – are they safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led? Having a standard set of KLOEs ensures consistency of what we look at under each of the five key questions and that we focus on those areas that matter most. This is vital for reaching a credible, comparable rating. To enable inspection teams to reach a rating, they gather and record evidence in order to answer each KLOE. “

What are you expected to demonstrate when being inspected?

Each KLOE has its own requirements and areas where the regulator will ask to see you demonstrate in order to perform well during inspection. This could be anything from responding to complaints and reports promptly, to involving people in the care they receive. There are a whole host of different ways you can achieve this and we will be looking into each KLOE in more detail in our upcoming articles. CQC will take a close look at your care plans and look at your care plan software if you use one.

How can Nourish support your care provision in regards to KLOEs?

Care management systems like Nourish help enable care providers to demonstrate the care and services they provide more effectively and efficiently. This is done through the provision of complete audit trails for point of care delivery and instant reporting functionality, that the care management system provides. This means when CQC or another inspectorate decides to investigate, you are able to successfully demonstrate the care you provide and show how your organisation meets their requirements when it comes to their KLOEs.

To find out more about Nourish can help with your regulatory inspections and compliance, then get in touch today – alternatively you can find out more information by reading the other Care Planning 101 articles found in our blog.