We’re all taught that oral health is essential to keep our teeth healthy but what does this really mean? Poor oral health can lead to malnutrition, pneumonia and a weakened immune system which can make it harder to recover from common illnesses. Studies are being conducted to see whether dental hygiene has any links to dementia. So how can we encourage better dental hygiene?

Getting people you support to the dentist is no easy feat. Dental practices aren’t always accessible, medical settings can be quite distressing and getting there requires accessible transport and extra staff. Instead of taking the people you support to the dentist, why not bring the dentist to you? Domiciliary dental services provide dental care right at home.

Some local NHS trusts offer training on dental health for a few members of staff, appointing these staff members as Oral Health Champions. These Champions undertake the training and the responsibility of training existing and new staff.  Ensuring your service is working to the NICE guidelines and the Oral Health policy could also become part of the Champions’ role.

Activities are a simple and fun way to encourage conversations about good oral health. Brushing your teeth may not seem fun but, depending on the people you supports abilities, it can be! If you have any keen knitters, download knitting patterns for knitting teeth, tooth fairies or tooth fairy pouches for grandchildren, young relatives and friends’ children. Arty people could have a go at crafting teeth and toothbrushes out of leftover cardboard and painting them. If you have any connections to a local school or nursery, invite them over (Covid-19 permitting) for a lesson on mouthcare. You could even have a sensory afternoon of science experiments, making elephant toothpaste, growing plaque with yeast and sugar and, egg brushing.

The Nourish platform allows dental hygiene to be logged, tracked and managed and provides an Oral Health Assessment Tool (OHAT) for new admissions. In Nourish, you are able to plan, manage and evidence dental appointments and visits and use the OHAT for regular reviews on the oral health of those you support. The Alerts and Warnings function can ensure appointments and reviews are not missed. Because dental health can have a significant impact on the general health of the people you support, the ability to monitor means early intervention is possible.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. “

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.

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.