The Homecare Association (HCA) is a longstanding representative and advocate for home care providers across the UK. They are committed to working alongside home care providers to drive positive change and share understanding and best practise. Their Technology and Home Care conference is a continuation of this legacy. Bringing home care leaders, care technology innovators and people with a passion for care together for a day that reflects on how we got where we are and discusses how we move forward from here. The day featured talks from well respected names in technology and social care covering topics that ranged from apps to AI and outcomes to Outstanding. As headline sponsor of the event we were proud to share our insights and very excited to learn from everyone else. 

The morning sessions of the Technology and Home Care Conference focussed on the potential of technology and home care. Dr Townson, CEO of the HCA welcomed The King’s Fund’s Pritesh Mistry to discuss how technology solutions can help move care closer to home. The talk centred on a piece of research The King’s Fund produced with Nourish. ‘The reality of, and potential for, digitally enabled care in the community’. It is an important piece of work that set the tone for the day, which we discuss in more detail in a blog we will release later this month. Crucially, one of Pritesh’s findings, that ‘technology for the sake of technology is not progress’, reverberated through the following panel discussion. 

The panel focussed on ‘Tech solutions for improving home care operations’. A practical reflection on the impact technology has on operational practises. Abbots Care’s Camille Leavold chaired a panel featuring ME Passport’s Carly Rochester, Lifted Talent’s Rachel Crook, Roger McDermott from NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands CSU, AI Dimension’s Mark Russell-Smith and Pairly’s Will Flint. These solutions are united by their commitment to designing technology solutions for the sake of care. Their innovations focus on established challenges care providers face. Whether it is recruitment or onboarding, capacity tracking or route planning. These solutions solved operational issues at the heart of home care. Reflecting the reality of tech-driven progress in our sector, as well as the potential for its development.

Following a quick break for chats and refreshments we returned to the main hall for the late morning talks. These panels turned their attention to outcomes, and how we can improve them with tech and data. The first talk centred on outcomes, and how we as a sector can be ‘people-led and tech enabled’ to improve them. Caroline Southgate of Doris Jones led a panel featuring Bellevie’s Trudie Fell, Gillie.AI’s Samuel Kivikari, Digi Rehab’s Arend Roos and Stephen Milne from Censis.

They shared insights from their respective technological innovations in care. Crucially, without losing sight of the people who define care. Something Arend Roos quickly reminded us of when we were all asked to stand up to start the conversation. Did you know AI is used to analyse approximately one-third of all home care in Finland? Or about the potential of the Internet of Things to support public bodies to move from analogue to digital? These examples proved just how much power technology can give providers to shape their own future. A point highlighted when Trudie Fell asserted: “It is up to us, not Local Authorities, to determine what outcomes we should focus on”

Of course, focussing on outcomes requires having the information to understand them. And that brings us to one of the key questions surrounding technology and social care, data. Our Chief Marketing Officer, Lee Gilbert, led the next panel in a discussion on exactly that. ‘What can we learn from the data in digital systems?’. Lee welcomed several leaders from prominent digital care solutions to join the discussion. Including our CEO Nuno Almeida. We discuss this incisive and informed panel in more detail here.

The post lunch session is always the most sluggish at any conference. It’s only natural. Any good organiser looks to put in a shocking, or otherwise stimulating, talk to wake everyone up. At Technology and Home Care 2024 this task fell to Right at Home’s Lucy Campbell and Lund University’s Laetitia Tanqueray. They set about their task with aplomb, sharing their understanding of ‘How robots will help us in home care in the future’. While we remain some ways off robots becoming commonplace, it is always exciting to be updated on their progress! 

From there attention switched to responsible use of AI and cyber security. AI is the hot-button topic across digital development. We share our sense of curiosity, excitement and apprehension with a wide range of sectors and institutions. Muhammad Damji of Caring Crew chaired the important panel. He set the table for Dr Green, of Oxford University’s Institute of Ethics in AI, Reed Screening’s Keith Rosser and Care4ocus’s Alex Joseph. They talked about the ethical use of AI, how to provide appropriate training and the rising need to be able to detect AI-created fake documents.  

“As providers, we have to be really careful that we adopt a piece of tech like AI with the correct adjustments in place. Always double-check any information that is produced by generative AI. Ensure that appropriate training is provided and reassure your team that AI and tech are being used to complement their work, not replace them.” Muhammad Damji, Managing Director, Caring Crew. 

The final session of the day featured one last discussion and Home Instead UK’s Martin Jones’s closing remarks. 

Steve Sawyer of The Access Group chaired the final panel of the day, stepping in for the unavailable Nathan Downing of TEC Services Association, to disucss ‘How can councils support innovation in home care. Stephen Peddie, Local Government Association and Steve Taylor of PA Consulting joined him. 
 
Our Steve speakers talked about how changing commissioning practices can support in-person care with technology and home care solutions. Highlighting three key mechanisms by which technology can impact the need for home care.  

The talk touched on many interesting undertakings across care. It also called back several ideas and initiatives detailed by other speakers earlier in the day. Fundamentally, we need to work together, with both our communities, and our councils, to deliver the outcomes we all want. 

Something Martin Jones reflected on in his closing address. 

“I do believe that conferences such as this gives us an opportunity to use and embrace new technology. We are going to need to use technology to support people as they grow older and to grow through the issues we have at the moment.” 

Martin Jones ended the incredible day with a simple thought exercise. He asked everyone to close their eyes and picture where technology and home care will be in 5 years. Once we all solidified an image in our minds, he asked us to open our eyes again. 

“It’ll take two years to get to what you pictured.” 

While the distance to our digital future remains debatable, one thing remains undeniable, we’ll need to work together to get there. 

If you would like to learn more about working with Nourish, contact us here. 

Growth is a winding road. In October 2023 Nourish Care acquired CarePlanner Home Care Software. The merger brought together two leading social care software solutions for care homes and home care respectively. More than this, it brought together two teams who already shared a philosophy for collaborative software development, and a passion for supporting care providers on their digital journey. Over the past year we combined experiences, shared perspectives and continued to develop best in class functionality for our users, alongside our users, to drive better outcomes for everyone involved. 

To celebrate an incredible 12 months, we caught up with some of the old guard from CarePlanner. We discussed the past year, what they’ve been up to, and why they’re excited for what’s still to come. 

Combining two companies is a large, but delicate process. One that requires balancing different teams, responsibilities and skills with new opportunities and ambitions. CarePlanner’s Operations Director, now Nourish’s Director of Operational Excellence, Mark Gutteridge was instrumental throughout this transition.  

“I oversaw the nuts and bolts side of bringing the two businesses together,” explained Mark. “Things like the processes, the way we work, the policies, making sure everything was aligned. That was the first six months. Since March of this year, my team are responsible for streamlining processes, putting in place new systems, and helping the business remain efficient as we continue to grow and onboard new customers. 

“It was a big undertaking, and our guiding philosophy throughout was making sure we always asked the question ‘Why?’. It was a key case of prioritizing what was important and what would make a difference to our users. We brought the two companies together so we would both be stronger. We really wanted to deliver on that potential. 

“There’s always a teething period with substantial changes like this. But once things settled down the benefits became obvious.  We used to say to ourselves that CarePlanner wanted to do a lot of things, but they didn’t always happen as swiftly as we’d like. When you look at how swiftly we’re launching new features like our eLearning solution now it’s inspiring. We’re able to respond much more quickly and effectively to our users and their experiences. I think that it’s been crucial in terms of making sure we continue to support our users and provide a market-leading product and service. Which is a really exciting place to be.” 

Understanding is central to building anything effectively. At Nourish and CarePlanner Home Care Software that understanding has always come from our users. Both companies boast team members with care experience. The combination of our Product teams, along with some experienced new leadership joining the fold, sharpened our focus, while at the same time unlocking whole new ideas to explore.   

“The new structure builds upon our established user led approach with a wealth of experience and clinical expertise,” explained Product Manager Robert Baker. “Their focus on the clinical safety and the clinical side of the product is invaluable. It empowers us to understand the best practice around our software so we can shape our functionality to best respond to our user’s needs. We always want to stay as close to the lived experience of care as possible. Because it helps us tailor Nourish to the specific needs and use cases, some of which we’d never discover on our own! 

“Fundamentally, the new structure keeps us focused on outcomes. Our attention is firmly on the problems we need to solve. Our teams have the resources and autonomy to respond to customer’s needs in a way that was previously unattainable. This means we can focus on developments for all sides of the Nourish platform, and any of the care types we support, with established care contacts and personal experience to guide us.” 

Product teams focused on how to capitalise on our future opportunities to improve outcomes for our users. However, there remained the sizable task of bringing together the functionality the two companies already built for their respective platforms. We spoke to Lead Developer Martin Joiner about how they addressed this undertaking, and the benefits of bringing fresh eyes and open minds to old challenges.  

“When we first joined together we were faced with two pieces of software with a lot of unique functionality,” explained Martin. CarePlanner’s home care software and Nourish’s residential. So, it was important to find the denominators. There are a lot of similarities between the systems as well. Features repeated across many platforms like: What does a profile look like? What information does it contain? How is an address formatted? General architecture like that. Lining these points up is a lot of work, but it is vital. We took small steps, one at a time to ensure we aligned the systems closely while still retaining the strengths of the previous structures. 

“Of course, just like in care, the real strength came from our people. With so many new people to talk to and work with there are so many opportunities to share best practice. We can ask ‘Why?’ whenever our curiosity is peaked and learn from each other. There are few things better for a problem than fresh eyes and informed opinions. We all value understanding why we are building something. And this close relationship with the purpose of our development process is reflected throughout Nourish’s tech teams. Another key denominator that has shaped our success over the past year. Leading to new developments like TARS, Time Off and eLearning for Nourish home care users.” 

Even on the technical level we find ourselves coming back to the importance of aligning on a human one. Personal connections define us all, especially when it comes to building productive, collaborative relationships in every aspect of our business. A maxim held true in both Nourish and CarePlanner. 

CarePlanner Home Care Software may have been the industry standard for rostering technology. However, its reputation was built on more than technology, it was built on relationships. Nourish shares that focus on personal connections. A prerequisite requirement for the merger, and a substantial relief to the customer-facing teams on both sides of the acquisition.  

“As Account Managers our first focus is always on the customers,” said Head of Account Managers Lauren Ware. “We build close connections with our customers because all Account Managers have dedicated accounts they work with. It delighted us to learn Nourish has the same approach. Thanks to the resources Nourish brings to bear on sector challenges our functionality and integrations have gone from strength to strength over the past year. This empowers Account Managers to unlock new opportunities for our users, and address long-standing challenges.  

“It’s one thing to be told your philosophy aligns with another company, it’s a different thing to see it for yourself. Care is a fundamentally human undertaking. For all the changes the sector and we experienced over the past few years, that remains the constant. In Nourish we found partners who share that focus, and the results speak for themselves.” 

The driving impetus of the acquisition was to make both solutions stronger. A combination of experience and insight to drive positive outcomes internally and externally for both businesses. One of the biggest changes this caused was for our support teams, whom we combined and specialised to best respond to our users in a timely and effective fashion. 

“Bringing together the best of both Nourish and CarePlanner Support teams has been an exciting journey,” detailed Head of Technical Support Cian Connolly. “One that has strengthened our focus on what matters most, our customers. Over time, as the dust of the merger settled, we came to understand the needs of users and the strengths of our colleagues. This inspired us to develop two teams, Customer Support and Technical Support. 

“With the move to dedicated Customer Support and Technical Support teams, we’re positioned to provide faster, more tailored solutions. Ensuring every interaction is both meaningful and effective. I’m incredibly proud of our team’s commitment and am excited for the future as we continue to raise the bar for customer experience in care technology!” 

CarePlanner Home Care Software belongs to the past. But the people, platform and purpose that shaped it for over a decade remain in place. Committed to the same goals, and the same communities to whom we have always owed allegiance. Nourish is now the largest supplier of social care software solutions in the UK. With over 400k people supported through Nourish and 350k carers driving positive outcomes for their communities every day. A responsibility we all take great pride and purpose in. 

The future remains an open horizon, and we have some fantastic company, and a stellar company, to join us on the journey. 

Why don’t you come too? 

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 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.  

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! 

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.

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!

There is a wealth of experience and insight on display on the Keynote Stage in Birmingham. Day 1 is loaded with leaders, lessons and laughs. We contacted the speakers taking to the Keynote Stage for some sneak previews of what they will cover. From state regulators to self-regulation there are several 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 Keynote Stage on Day 1, Wednesday 9^th October.

10:30 – 11:00 
Speakers
Mark Topps, Co-Founder and Director, The Caring View 
Adam Purnell, Co-Founder and Director, The Caring View 
Caroline Barker, Legal Director, Healthcare Regulatory 
Julie Garrity, Independent Health and Social Care Advisor

The Caring View is a well-known and highly regarded source of useful information and important conversations in social care. Join the hosts, Mark Topps and Adam Purnell as they welcome Caroline Barker, Julie Garrity and the entire care community to a cool-headed conversation on one of the hottest topics in our humble sector, regulation.  

“The focus of our conversation with be, ‘how can we ensure compliance with the regulator with regards to care quality?’ So, we’ve got Julie Garrity, who’s an ex CQC inspector and social care advisor, and Caroline Barker from HCR law joining us. We’re going to talk around. Obviously, we know that there’s loads of confusion out there around the single assessment framework. Plus we’re all waiting for Dr Penny Dash’s full report into the CQC. HCR law has seen an increase in people contesting the outcome of their reports. Julie and other consultants have said they’re inundated with providers that need support. Our goal is to triangulate everything that’s going on, all these different sources of information and experience, to focus on how providers can actually just look forward, be streamlined, and leave the framework as it is with all the changes that are going on.” Mark Topps, Co-founder and Director – The Caring View

11:05 – 11:35 
Speaker
Matthew Stewart, Chief Product Officer, Nourish Care 

Our own Chief Product Officer, Matthew Stewart, will be treading the Keynote Stage boards on day 1. With an extensive background that covers a range of sectors, Matthew understands the crucial moment care technology has reached. There are huge opportunities for care providers and digital suppliers to come together and co-produce effective solutions for everyone in care.

“I love a good challenge. Throughout my career the challenges I faced were consistently about transformation. I worked in many different sectors, but always at the same moment, when there is the opportunity for change, for an industry to take the next step and move forward. As Chief Product Officer for Nourish I recognise that same point in social care. Now is the time for us to face the challenge of utilising digital care systems effectively and take the next big step in quality care. It will not be simple, and it will rarely be straightforward, but we already see positive examples emerging across social care. Join me for an open and ambitious conversation covering what we have achieved already, and what more we can achieve together.” 

11:50 – 12:20 
Speaker
Dr Ant Webb, Founder, Switched on Thinking

Dr. Ant, also known as the Brain Whisperer, empowers people through the art of positive mind practice. In a world of constant stress, pressure and responsibility it is no surprise so many carers are facing burnout. Join Dr Webb for an inspiring keynote on stress management and mindset empowerment, designed specifically for the care sector.  

“In this session, I will introduce my powerful Switched on Thinking® methodology, showing how caregivers can shift from reactive to proactive mindsets. I can help carers learn how to identify emotional triggers, manage stress before it escalates, and foster collaboration within their teams to enhance resilience. Through practical tools like the Circle of Awareness®, attendees will leave with actionable strategies to improve their own well-being while enhancing the quality of care they provide. This is a must-attend talk for those looking to build a stronger, more supportive care environment while preventing burnout and enhancing team cohesion. Don’t miss this transformative session!” 

13:30 – 14:00
Speaker
Big Ian Donaghy, Chair

The sweet tooth from chocolate city, Big Ian Donaghy will be the Chair for the Keynote Stage. He will also be taking to the stage himself just after lunch to talk about how we can all benefit by supporting neurodiversity in care. 

“My talk is about why we need to embrace the neuro divergence population into care. If we want things to stay the same, then we need to be bringing people into care who just think the same and do the same and are happy to do the same. Whereas, if you want to create change, you need somebody who looks at things differently. Someone who does things differently and someone who maybe treats people differently. We need people in care who are different, not worse. People in care who are different, not less. We need people who are magnificently different to create change, to make care better. So, I’m doing a big thing about why we need to go looking for the people who view things differently so that we can revolutionize care.”

14:15 – 14:45 
Speakers
Vikki Beckwith, Managing Director, The Affinity Care Group Limited 
Tiffany Nelson, Operations Manager, The Affinity Care Group Limited

Regulators are a common source of consternation in care. Inspections are always going to involve stress; it is a natural part of the process. Providers know how important it is to put their best foot forward in these situations, but do you know how? With recent reforms and reports there remains an air of uncertainty when evidencing to the CQC. An air that Affinity Care Group are looking to help providers dispel with their informative and actionable afternoon talk.  

“At the Care Show Birmingham this year, we’re covering a topic that I believe many care providers will find valuable. Evidencing for a CQC inspection is a major challenge for many in the sector. As a business, you may be doing everything right, but if you can’t evidence it properly, your rating could be impacted. Last year, we focused on navigating the CQC’s new Single Assessment Framework, but this year, we’re shifting to a more actionable topic. Our hope is that attendees leave with the confidence and knowledge to excel in their next CQC inspection.” Vikki Beckwith, Managing Director – The Affinity Care Group Limited 

15:00 – 15:30 
Speakers
Angela Boxall, Chief Executive Officer, Majesticare Luxury Care Homes 
Diane Danzebrink, Consultant, Speaker, Educator & Author, Menopause Support

Menopause is a big topic, one that has a profound impact on the social care workforce. However, it is too frequently relegated to small conversations. Join Angela Boxall and Diance Danzebrink as they take on the big issues at the heart of menopause and how care providers can improve the support and understanding they offer. 

“In our session I will be sharing an overview of the diversity of the menopause experience to help organisations understand how they can offer help and support to colleagues, whatever their menopause experience. My own experience made me acutely aware of just how difficult it can be to navigate the confusing worlds of menopause and mental health without the right help and support. As a result, I combine my professional therapy skills, experience and nurse training in menopause to focus on providing factual, evidence-based information and support to help others navigate menopause and mental health.” Diane Danzebrink – Menopause Support

With so many great options for attendees at Care Show Birmingham 2024 it is understandable to have your attention divided. Make sure you make time for some of the engaging sessions we have listed above. And don’t forget to come visit us on stand G40, we’ve got plenty more surprises in store!

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Social care technology grew rapidly over the past 5 years. A variety of digital and technical solutions for the range of challenges that care providers face every day. In the rush to provide effective solutions suppliers created a new problem, replacing analogue silos of information with digital ones. The Nourish Partnership Programme addresses this problem by building a comprehensive digital estate of integration partners, that our users can review and apply to their service as required, so they can continue to provide outstanding care for their communities. 

At Nourish Care we are excited to announce our partnership with Altra, a wellbeing and engagement app. We have covered their activities, wellbeing, feedback and survey features previously. In our final blog we are going to cover our favourite focus of Altra, communication and community.  

Altra is an Irish company who were founded in 2019. Their name, directly translated from Gaeilge means ‘nurse’. In this linguistic spirit we would like to share with you another popular Irish phrase; Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. It means ‘People live in each other’s shadows.’ Admittedly something is lost in the translation, but the heart of this message rings true regardless of tongue. We rely on each other for shelter, for strength, for community. 

Our family and friends play a crucial role in our lives. When a provider wants to help people to live their lives to the fullest, they must consider the involvement of family and friends, otherwise known as their circle of care. The closer connected someone remains with their circle of care, the more involved and engaged they feel in their own life. Altra gives users the tools to support circles of care, evidence engagement and promote connections on terms that both care providers and the people who draw upon their service can be comfortable with. 

The Single Assessment Framework is the Care Quality Commission’s new approach to inspections. The first of the 6 new evidence categories of this framework is ‘People’s experience of health and care services’. In their own words: 

“This is all types of evidence from people who have experience relating to a specific health or care service, or a pathway across services. It also includes evidence from families, carers and advocates for people who use services.” 

Care providers who engage routinely with the people using their service and their circles of care benefit from a constantly updating record of the experiences of their care. Evidence of which impresses regulators regardless of geography. This information is invaluable for shaping your care, as well as your inspection rating. Altra provides a platform for wellbeing and activities information to be both recorded and shared. One that is rooted in lived experience, regulatory requirements and familial responsibility.  

Family means ‘Ohana’, and ‘Ohana’ means nobody gets left behind. This is one of the many key life lessons imparted by Disney’s 2002 classic Lilo and Stitch. A loved one receiving care is a source of great relief for many families, but also one of great stress. The natural impulse to check in on them consistently is one we have all felt towards those we care about. While entrusting your loved one to receive care from a service is a source of immense relief, it is still only natural to want to check in on that service.  

Altra makes this process not only simple, but beneficial to all parties. It gives families the tools to share their perception and experience of the care their loved one is receiving with the care provider.  

There is an understandable apprehension amongst care providers when deciding how much to involve families and friends in the inner workings of their loved one’s care. The information care providers choose to share with a person’s circle of care needs to be detailed enough to satisfy their questions, while being digestible enough to calm their concerns. Altra provides a suite of features so you can directly link people into a circle of care, clearly illustrate the activities their loved one is engaged with and their level of wellbeing.  

Altra provides a secure engagement application that allows care providers to share updates on the well-being of people utilising their service directly with their circle of care. This app works a bit like an Instagram feed updating the interested party with all the relevant information they need regarding their loved one’s care. 
 
Altra simplifies the process of engaging and collaborating with a person’s circle of care. You can share information with families in a variety of forms, including video, photos and direct messages. Providers use these different formats to paint a complete picture of the support they are providing, and the life the person using their service is living as a result.  

This app is not a one-way street either. It promotes engagement by allowing families to post updates for their loved ones as well. Altra enables these digital updates to be easily converted to physical printed newsletters, delighting the people you support. Specific information that speaks to the individuality of the people using your service and promotes the connections that make life worth living.  

Altra goes beyond digital connections. Care home operators can use the app to set up ‘family events’. Invite relevant people to the event and it will display who is attending, who has responded and so on. Through this functionality Altra promotes visits in a way that easily feeds back into your existing system. You can include as much information about the planned visit as you want. This simplifies your organisational process while maintaining an up-to-date record of the visit for reviewing and reporting purposes. 

Of course, not everyone will be able to visit all the time. You can also arrange video calls through Altra to make sure that residents stay connected to their circle of care.  

The app even includes a concierge service. This can be used by the circle of care in a variety of ways, including ordering special requests from the kitchen (such as birthday cakes!) or booking specific outings and events for their loved one. All requests are easily recordable and reportable so you can efficiently factor them into your invoicing process. 

Care comes in all shapes and sizes, and it casts a long shadow. One that people, families and communities use for shelter. The more involved everyone feels in the construction of this shelter, the more satisfaction everyone takes in its success. With Nourish and Altra you can build strong connections throughout your service, capitalising on the ones that are already there, and providing the foundations for many more.

You can read more about Altra’s functionality:
Activities and Wellbeing
Feedback and Surveys