Birthdays are a natural cause for reflection. As Nourish Care celebrate our 10^th we find ourselves looking to both the future and the past to better understand where we are today. For 10 years, ever since we got our first customer, Nourish has been proudly supporting care providers across the UK and beyond.

Growing alongside our users, increasing the functionality of our platform and expanding the range of care types we work with. Throughout this journey we remain connected by a singular focus, a golden thread that runs through every iteration and evolution of Nourish. The idea that the people who receive care come first. This commitment to care and foundation in coproduction defines our past and decides our future. As we look forward to a litany of possibilities, from data and AI, to family connections and institutional integrations, it is our focus on people that matters most. As is tradition. 

Okay, technically, we are actually closer to 14 than we are to 10. The seed for Nourish was first planted in 2011. This seed of an idea would spend four years flowering into the first iteration of Nourish that was officially launched with our first customers in 2015. These four years laid the groundwork of both our system and our culture. Nourish is rooted, deeply, in the care experience. We can only succeed in putting people first when we first start with their perspectives, experiences and outcomes of care.  

In 2015 our CEO, Nuno Almeida, took part in a Tedx event in Bournemouth. The theme was ‘Creative Illumination’. It boasted a range of speakers and sectors, unified by their creative solutions for established challenges. Back then, the main focus for care technology was digitisation. While the conversation moved significantly forward since then, the roots of Nourish’s person-centred approach remain as relevant as ever. Digital care records are no longer an aspiration; they are a common feature.  The goal of connected care plans is still pursued throughout each iteration of Nourish products as we continue to build towards a more informed, and informative, care ecosystem. You can even see the early ideas of data and AI application way back in 2015 when Nuno mentions ‘creating the right algorithms running on the data to help drive improved outcomes for people using care’. 

Fundamentally, the talk ends with a focus on people. The people who utilise care services, their families, and the people who provide care. Nuno mentioned a few examples specifically as well as the ‘20 or so’ providers we were already working with. Because while ‘when’ we started can be debated, ‘how’ we started is clear. We started by working with care providers, and that is how we will always continue. 

The past 10 years saw a lot of changes at Nourish Care. With expansions, integrations, and configurations galore.  

The first three years were focussed on building out our functionality and scaling up to meet the needs of our rapidly increasing customer base. We went from 12 users at the start of 2015 to 428 in 2018! Thanks to user feedback we developed foundational features for the Nourish system during this time. Starting with interactive care plans in 2016, before focusing on data utilisation with Nourish Analytics launching in 2017 and Nourish Insights in 2018. Features and products we continue to develop and offer today! 

By 2018 Nourish was operating in social care for several formative years. Over this time we learned about both the potential of our software systems, and the reality of social care technology.  

So we co-founded CASPA with other care technology suppliers. The key goal of this group was the effective, safe and regulated proliferation of digital systems in social care. CASPA provided a resource for software suppliers to champion the benefits of our systems, like the exchange of information between care and health services, and other ways of digitally promoting continuity of care. This development reflected our ambition to positively impact social care on a larger scale through both our technology and our technological knowledge. 

This undertaking almost immediately bore beneficial fruit. In 2020 COVID struck the world down, and social care providers across the UK stood up in response. CASPA demonstrated the power of care data utilisation to the UK government and the NHS. This data supported the forecasting and planning of future waves of the COVID virus to inform appropriate preparation and responses. A revelatory application of social care data. One that in turn helped drive improved care outcomes in many areas.  

After the success of this initiative during COVID, CASPA pushed for further digitisation in social care. The establishment of the ‘Digitising Social Care’ programme was a direct result. Nourish was the first software supplier to qualify for the Digitising Social Care ‘Assured Solutions List’. The programme’s guide for approved systems available for purchase with local authority financial contribution. 

The funding and expertise offered by this programme helped accelerate digitisation in social care throughout 2021. The following few years saw a myriad of digital platforms announce themselves to the sector. Each boasting its own benefits and unique solutions for long-standing social care challenges. 

In response to this rapidly increasing selection of software we established the Nourish Partnership Programme (NPP) in 2022. We recognised that we can’t be the one source of every good idea in care technology. There are people working on brilliant technology all the time. Through the NPP we have, do and will continue to build connections with other care technology suppliers. Establishing a new aspect to our tradition of collaboration. Drawing on their specialisations and perspectives to support our software and offering guidance to Nourish users who are interested in expanding their technology ecosystem. Of course, we only integrate with those we align with, such as Altra, Found by Lottie, and e-Reception Book. This way we can ensure we are up to date with the best systems out there, as well as uncompromising on our commitment to keep people at the forefront of everything we do.  

One of the biggest steps we took on this front was quite recent. Nourish Care acquired CarePlanner in 2023, nearly doubling our size and opening the world of home care to our technology. This acquisition was built on more than technological ambition. It brought together two care technology teams that already shared a design philosophy. A denominator of putting the person being supported first smoothed the combination of these teams. Following this acquisition Nourish became the most widely used care management supplier in the UK! 

2024 was a year of growth across Nourish. We continue to add to our list of integrations and partners. We are building out all of our teams to reflect our ambition and responsibility. It took us a little time to fully acclimate to our increased size. Once these teams settled and people found the room to excel, we couldn’t help but look once more to the future. 

The future is bright here at Nourish. Informed by tradition and unleashed by collaboration we have big plans and bold ambitions. Care technology is far more widespread than when we started. As a result we are moving from questions of digitisation to data utilisation.  

When it comes to understanding data, and by extension AI, we are at the forefront in the care sector. We hired a team of well-educated and experienced developers, led by our Director of Data and AI, Sudha Regmi. We remain unwilling to rush to delivery with AI, as we continue to iterate and test AI models alongside Nourish users. This ensures we are not caught up in the hype of AI applications sweeping every industry in the world right now. But rather, we can walk assuredly, in step with care providers, to find the right applications of AI, and consequently, build the best apps for it.  

This approach has stood us well over the past 10 years, and even recently has helped us develop new, exciting functionality for data management. Such as our Insight dashboards, and several exciting products coming soon.

These new products represented the next era for Nourish. Which in turn initiated an update to our naming conventions. Over the past 10 years we transitioned from working with care homes, to a wider range of care and support providers. As we expand our product range and the people we support even further, we realised we needed to update across the board while enshrining our guiding philosophy. 

While we are expanding our range of products, our commitment remains the same. The people in receipt of care come first. Our new selection of products, the ‘Nourish Product Ecosystem’, reflect the changing world of care and support around us. They are targeted at specific challenges providers face. Offering effective digital solutions for a wide range of needs because we know no two people with support are the same. One size will very much not fit all. You need the right tools for the job, and the best people behind them to support you.  

Each circle of the Ecosystem reflects a different focus for our products and the impact it will have on your community. 

With each individual product developed and tested through co-production with our users to provide you with the innovations your community needs. 

At the coalface of our new innovations is our product team. Under the stewardship of our Chief Product Officer, Matthew Stewart, we built a robust and creative product team. We understand care technology is at an inflection point in its development. We care presented with the opportunity to truly revolutionise how care is delivered and the outcomes it provides. Our team works alongside care providers, in Nourish tradition, to build this technology. Creating a cycle of iteration and feedback with a range of stakeholders from throughout the care process. Ensuring we have the perspective and experience of everyone who will be impacted by the care provided. 

Who knows what the next 10 years holds?  

At Nourish we are preparing the same we always have. By working with our users. Talking to people who live care every day. Bringing together technical expertise with human understanding and building solutions collaboratively across a range of relevant experiences. Reflection without action is simply indulgence. We look back with honesty so we can step forward with certainty. The past 10 years have not always been straightforward, but thanks to the people around us, we always know where we’re going.  

Come join us for the next 10, it’s going to be one hell of a celebration. 

At UK Care Week 2025 our Director of Data & AI Sudha Regmi took to the Caring & Sharing stage to address a topic sweeping the social care sector, Artificial Intelligence. Sudha spent time laying out the Nourish approach to AI design and model development. One roted in responsible AI, co-production and transparent modelling.

Sudha draws on her extensive 15 years of experience developing AI models in a range of industries to lay out the potential applications of AI in social care. Starting with data analysis and carrying through to predictive and prescriptive applications of AI. With specific regard to the ‘Triple Aim’ of improving care quality, personal outcomes and care outcomes.

Sudha also explores the guiding aims and design principles that shape AI model’s development. She details potential risks, why responsible, transparent design is crucial and how these tie into the UK government’s responsible AI principles.

Find out more about Nourish Care’s commitment to responsible AI design, and how we are building the future of social care alongside our users.

AI is a discussion taking many forms. In care and support it is vital to ensure these forms always keep the people utilising your service at the forefront of their AI design process. This can only be guaranteed through a commitment to coproduction and collaboration across health and care providers, suppliers and communities.

If you’d like to learn more about how we work with other suppliers, make sure you check out the Nourish Partnership Programme for a list of compatible technologies we integrate with. If you are an exsiting Nourish user, you can contact your Account Manager directly to learn more.

If you’d like to learn more about working with Nourish check out our case studies. We cover a range of care and support types including residential, home care, learning development, mental health and more. Read the case studies here.

Care data is two words with three syllables and hundreds of missed opportunities. Over the past five years, the care sector has undergone a significant digital transformation. This shift generated an immense amount of data for care providers, offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance care delivery. Every data point gathered in care represents a unique interaction, a personal impact and a human being. Vital threads in the tapestry of our communities. However, as a result, many small and medium-sized providers find themselves with a wealth of data but without the resources to effectively act upon it.

Enter ‘Nourish Insights‘, our revelatory data utilisation product that enables carers to effortlessly review and act upon their data. Built with a Power BI integration, Insights offers care providers a range of predefined dashboards detailing key areas of their care delivery. Equipping your team with the tools to drill down into specific data for more detailed information on your service. Our dashboards are developed through coproduction with Nourish users, ensuring they focus on the data that unlocks the past, informs the present and shapes the future of your care.  

Insights helps care and support providers make sense of their past by presenting all the data gathered by their teams in an easily digestible format. Managers can review data from a top-down perspective with the respective dashboard overview. This comprehensive view details all the relevant, available data you have gathered across your service. Which, utilising Power BI, is presented in an easy to understand and exportable format. Additionally, each dashboard offers a selection of more detailed views or ‘pages’ of your data so you can drill down on the points that matter to you. A journey that begins on a timeline of your previous month can end as specifically as the word count on a single care plan. Allowing care homes to reflect on their practices and make informed decisions based on historical data. 

Care is all about understanding, a power that comes from knowledge. Insights updates regularly, ensuring that providers have all the information they need, accurate and at their fingertips. This enables managers to review data from anywhere. Providing you with the flexibility and context to manage your communities confidently. When used in conjunction with Nourish Better Care’s interactions, our powerful data capture functionality, you can rest assured you have everything you need from your digital platform to provide outstanding care and support. Because it is all right in front of you when you need it.  

Insights not only helps care providers understand their past and present but also prepares them for the future. By revealing trends over time, Insights uncovers details of care that might otherwise be overlooked or forgotten in the bottom of a filing cabinet. The functionality unlocks powerful preventative applications of the data you possess. This foresight allows providers to monitor trends and take proactive actions to drive better outcomes and continuously improve your quality of care. Moving your care from treatment to prevention, in line with the government’s ambitions for the NHS. The ability to anticipate future needs and challenges is invaluable in promoting independence in your care community. As well as supporting the people utilising your service to achieve their personal aims. 

Crucially, Insights includes the ability to share the information you are reviewing. This makes it an excellent tool for evidencing compliance with regulatory requirements and bodies. Care and support providers can export and print the dashboard views they want to share with ease. This capability ensures that care homes can confidently showcase their commitment to quality care, and the actions they have taken to provide it. 

To illustrate the power of Insights, let’s review the care and support planning dashboard. This board provides an overview of all your service’s care plans. It further details the status of these plans in a range of ways, such as highlighting those with a high level of need or overdue reviews. Managers can drill down into specific dashboard pages and data points to understand patterns and identify areas for improvement.

This targeted approach enables users to apply filters to the data, such as person supported or a team member. From here you can view specific care plans or see an overview of care plans linked to a specific person. For example, you can review every care plan associated with one of your carers or person with support, check their details and even go straight to a specific care plan on your Nourish system. This helps care providers to apply their focus where the most emphasis is needed.  

Nourish Insights offers a range of dashboards including; ‘Warnings’, ‘Weight Monitoring’ and ‘Critical Information’. All Nourish customers have access to two Insights dashboards for free, our Overview Dashboard and our Skin and Integrity Dashboard. So you can explore this powerful functionality for yourself.  

If you would like to learn more, please contact your Account Manager directly.   

Nourish Insights harnesses the power of data for care and support providers, presenting it in an easily understandable and actionable format. This empowers you to take control of your time and resources, enabling you to deliver the best care and support possible. By understanding the past, staying aware of the present, and preparing for the future, you can continuously improve your services. Driving improved outcomes for everyone in your community, and ensuring you never miss an insight, or an opportunity, again. 

Change, from social care to sofa cushions, is a constant.   

For a decade we at Nourish Care have been proud to help shape that change in social care. When we launched Nourish care technology was in its infancy. A vague selection of ideas and applications attempting to address a complex collection of people, processes and promises. Our approach was rooted in our understanding, bringing together our technical expertise with our personal experiences of care to ensure that care technology always put people first. From the very beginning, Nourish has been built on one simple but powerful belief: the person supported matters most. 

This belief is why we develop all our functionality through coproduction. Our commitment to collaboration is felt throughout our system. Thanks to this approach our understanding of care is deeper, our experiences wider and our expertise sharper than when we started. We continue to grow with our users just as social care technology enters its awkward adolescence. The past decade has shown us the potential for technology in social care, while Nourish users have revealed to us the best applications for our software, opening our eyes to the opportunities for supporting positive change in the wider system of care. In response, we are releasing several new Nourish products to support the wider care sector. 

This expansion of our application is rooted in keeping people at the centre of our systems. We know growth demands structure, scaling demands clarity, and crucially, care demands trust. Structure can be built, clarity provided but trust, trust must be earned.  

Nourish Care is the longstanding name of our platform and our business. More than that it is a promise, a commitment to community, coproduction and care. We will be changing the name of our platform to accommodate the new products we have developed for the wider system of care. 

We are keeping the promise. 

Our new naming convention reflects our renewed focus on people. Technology should feel as natural as the care it supports. That’s why we’ve ensured that every product name reflects not just what the platform does, but how it makes people feel. 

Nourish Care will become Nourish Better Care 
It’s important to remember where you started! Nourish Better Care is the most trusted and customisable care management system for residential providers in the UK. 

Nourish Rostering will become Nourish Empower  
All the tools a home care provider needs to support their community and manage their service. 

Nourish Community will become Nourish Better Care at Home 
Combining the mobility and admin of Nourish Empower with the industry leading point of care functionality of Nourish Better Care to support effective processes and drive improved outcomes. 

Nourish Mobile Device Management (MDM) will become Nourish Protect  
Keep your devices secure and your community’s data safe with our mobile device management system. 

Nourish Insights
Get the full picture of your service with our data dashboards so you can make more informed, more effective decisions. 

Nourish eLearning  
Available through our home care platforms, Nourish eLearning offers an integrated, accredited by CPD and Skills for Care, library of care courses for your team to utilise, supported with real time reporting. 

Nourish Care will continue to be the name of our business, with the specific names of products reflecting the impact they deliver for care providers and your communities. 

We are not the only ones changing. You are too. Our users have changed so much over the past decade, through digitisation, updated regulations, and new legislation, without ever losing sight of the people that make care so special. With our new, multiple product approach, we are establishing our foundation for future growth alongside you. So, we can best respond to the needs of today, and the challenges of tomorrow.  

No two people with support are the same. Uniqueness is the blessing, and the curse of social care. One size will very much not fit all. You need the right tools for the job, and the best people behind them to support you. 

To make it easier to find the right products for your community we created the Nourish Product Ecosystem. Each circle reflects a different focus for our products and the impact it will have on your community. 

Care Delivery – For Feeling Supported  
Technology that steps back, so care can step forward. 

Continuous Improvement – For Feeling Assured  
Because confident carers create safer, more consistent outcomes. 
 
Operations – For Feeling Secure  
Supporting care teams to be prepared, skilled, and sure of what comes next. 
 
Connectivity – For Feeling Connected  
Bringing together every piece of the care puzzle around the person. 

This approach goes beyond categorisation. It lays the foundation from which every new product, every innovation, and every solution we launch builds towards something bigger.  

Most importantly, it ensures that as we scale, we never lose sight of what made us great, keeping the person supported at the centre of care. 

Imagine a healthcare system where care teams feel empowered instead of overwhelmed. Where families feel reassured instead of disconnected. Where people receiving care feel safe, valued, and heard.  

That’s the world we’re building.  

And we’re not waiting.  

We have coordinated internally
So our teams live and breathe this philosophy.  

We are communicating externally
So our customers feel the impact as soon as possible.

We will continue to co-produce
Because technology should evolve with the people it serves. 

Change is a constant, a promise, and a challenge. One that can only be met in the same way we always have here at Nourish, by working together. Coproducing our products so that people are always at the centre of everything we design, develop and do. Because after all, change, like care, is human. 

We’ve got lots of exciting plans coming soon, if you want to build the future of social care with Nourish, contact us directly today. 

UK Care Week sits on the sunrise of Spring in the social care calendar. It beckons the buds of social care to take root in the fresh soil of 2025. We headed to Birmingham, excited to reconnect with the social care sector en masse. And share some of the ideas and functionality we are working on. Our Director of Data and AI Sudha Regmi took to the caring & sharing stage. To share our approach to ‘Responsible AI’. While our team members chatted to attendees and took in some of the other insightful sessions across the two days.   

Positioned at the entrance to UK Care Week 2025, our stand was a vibrant hub of activity for both days. We designed it to welcome Nourish users and interested attendees alike. Visitors were greeted with interactive displays to engage and explore our functionality, aided by our experienced team on the stand. This first-hand experience allows visitors to see how our tools can streamline care management and improve outcomes for their community. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, from both our visitors and our team. Each conversation held on our stand was two-directional. Offering an opportunity to learn more about care practise and care technology potential to all parties.  

Beyond our stand, the Nourish Care team actively participated in various talks and workshops throughout the event. These sessions provided valuable insights into the latest trends and challenges in the social care sector. We attended discussions on topics ranging from regulatory changes to the integration of new technologies in care settings. These interactions not only enriched our understanding but also reinforced our commitment to staying at the forefront of social care innovations.  

The most impactful of these sessions consistently were the ones informed by carer experience and open conversation. Such as those held by The Care Workers Charity and their Carers Advisory Board, as well as several talks on The Caring View stage. The knowledge gained from these sessions, combined with our more personal conversations, inform our future developments and strategies intrinsically.

One of the highlights of our participation was the talk delivered by our Director of Data and AI, Sudha Regmi. Titled ‘Responsible AI and Responsive Design in Social Care,’ the presentation delved into our person led approach to AI design. Sudha emphasised the importance of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity in AI development. Focussing on the necessity of keeping a ‘human in the loop’ throughout the process. The talk was well-received, sparking engaging discussions and leaving attendees with a deeper understanding of how AI can be responsibly harnessed to benefit the social care sector. If you’d like to learn more about this subject Sudha will be speaking at Care Show London. 

In addition to Sudha, our Content Marketing Manager Lorcán Murray hosted two panels at UK Care Week 2025. On Wednesday he helped kick off the show alongside Digital Care Hub’s Katie Thorn. Their discussion ‘Choosing the right tech to help people with dementia live a fulfilled life’ covered the potential of technology, the purpose of dementia care and how to understand and pursue your desired outcomes for your community. All underpinned by the need to keep people and family members involved throughout the process.  

On Thursday Lorcán hosted a discussion between Skills for Care’s Oonagh Smyth and The Care Workers’ Charity’s Karolina Gerlich. The session ‘What is the solution to our domestic workforce crisis?’ drew upon the deep experience, and research from both Skills for Care and the CWC. It touched on many of the important challenges facing social care’s domestic recruitment, including perception of the sector, government recruitment campaigns, career pathways and more. There remains a great deal of work to be done to address domestic recruitment challenges. And human stories and experiences are vital to opening our world up to a wider workforce. 

Our trip to UK Care Week was not just about showcasing our technology; it was primarily an opportunity to connect directly with the people who define social care. We dedicated time to meeting with and learning from existing Nourish users, listening to their experiences and gathering feedback on how we can better support their needs. These conversations are invaluable, providing us with direct insights into the real-world impact of our solutions and helping shape the future of Nourish Care. Additionally, we connected with potential new customers, sharing our vision and exploring how our technology can address their unique challenges.

In conclusion, UK Care Week 2025 was a resounding success for Nourish Care. The event provided a platform to showcase our innovations, engage with the community, and reinforce our commitment to responsible AI and person-led design. As we look ahead, we are inspired by the connections made and the insights gained, and we remain dedicated to driving positive change in the social care sector. 

If you’d like to be a part of that change, come and say hi at Care Show London, or contact us directly. 

The future of social care in the UK is linked to the future of the NHS. One cannot progress without the other. So, when the NHS established the Assured Solutions List (ASL) to help shape the future of digital social care, every software supplier in the sector took notice. NHS Assurance is a clear badge of quality and ambition. Nourish Care was the first Digital Social Care Record (DSCR) to join the ASL. A statement of our commitment to both compliance and innovation in care technology.  

The purpose of the ASL is to encourage care providers to digitise. By establishing a trusted baseline of system requirements and providing funding to help providers get started. The requirements for membership of the ASL granted confidence to providers of the capabilities of the system they were using to digitise their processes. NHS Assurance guarantees safety, security and reliability for care providers when choosing their digital partner.  

Since Nourish joined the ASL, it continues to expand in membership and calibre. This year saw an expansion of standards with the introduction of 14 new standards. These standards built upon the baseline of requirements for assured solutions and indicated the coming ambitions for health and social care interoperability. They covered a range of important issues, including the use of data, information sharing, security and integrations.  

You can read about these standards and how Nourish complies with them here. 

It is crucial to use a system that complies with these standards to set yourself up for the future. Most suppliers are still yet to be approved on all 14 standards, you can see how far along they are here. Click on the supplier and navigate to their ‘Standards’ drop down. 

It is clear the NHS have further designs for the ASL and its members. Compliance with the existing standards indicates a supplier is aligned with the future direction of digital social care. When looking to your own future it is important to ask the suppliers you utilise about theirs.  

What connections do they have to the NHS?  
What is their approach to interoperability? 
How committed are they to maintaining their standards of compliance and information security? 

Ensuring alignment with your digital supplier is vital for building a future-proof and secure business. Ensuring your system and service are qualified with NHS assurance. If you are curious about switching your digital system to a new supplier, we have prepared a useful document detailing the process with us. You can view it here.  

If you would like to learn more about how Nourish works with our users to wrap our system around your service, you can read our case studies here. 

One of the clearest requirements of the new 14 standards for NHS Assurance is interoperability. The ability to record, store and share information securely. This is in direct response to the ‘sin of silos’ that plagued health and care providers for decades.  

Along with our adherence to these standards Nourish also champions interoperability through the Nourish Partnership Programme. This initiative reflects our commitment to building solutions across suppliers to best serve care providers and their communities. We are proud to develop social care led solutions alongside suppliers, providers and our wider communities. 

The NHS and social care move together. In September Wes Streeting announced ‘three key shifts’ for the NHS. With recent developments for the ASL, increased focus on compliance and a commitment to interoperability it is obvious this shift is coming to care as well. We previously explored the move from ‘Analogue to Digital’ here. The ability to deliver the other two key shifts, namely ‘sickness to prevention’ and ‘hospital to community’ will largely be defined by the ability of different health and care providers to share their information with each other. The ‘Data Use and Access Bill‘ highlights this focus from the UK government and points to the significance of membership to the ASL for digital social care records as a baseline.

It is clear digital systems will play a huge role in the future of health and care in the UK. Now is the time to make sure you have a partner you trust, understand and enjoy working with.  

Now is the time to talk to Nourish, because things are just getting started. 

Care technology is a duality. The combination of human need (care) and digital processes (technology) is more pronounced in our sector than almost every other. At Nourish Care, we design our software to balance these two aspects, driving positive outcomes and operational efficiency. It is this approach that sets our solutions apart from the rest of the market. Nourish Rostering offers functionality that goes beyond other digital rostering solutions in both its effectiveness and its understanding. Our call monitoring and mobile app are powerful tools that empower both coordinators and carers. Our ‘Recommend’ a carer feature brings together data points to promote personal connections and our financial suite gives home care providers all the tools you need to stay in the black and on the right track.  So, you can stay on top of the numbers, needs and necessities to provide Outstanding care. 

Appointments, calls, visits, whatever name they take, wherever they happen, these are the lifeblood of home care. County councils and NHS bodies purchase 79% of home care and 96% of supported living services in the UK. Many of these contracts are determined by ‘Actual Appointment Times’, rather than just number of appointments. Digital rostering solutions are an effective way to record appointment times and Nourish Rostering gives you a range of options to definitively record and report them to your commissioner with our call monitoring.  

We offer home care providers a range of options for call monitoring. These include one time password (OTP) devices, Near Field Communication (NFC) tags, Landline and a Start/Stop button built into our mobile app. These options enable you to record not only the appointment times, but also the location of your carer when the appointment starts. This information is vital for continually improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your care. Helping you to personalise your support for your community.  

Quality home care helps people stay connected to their community, and quality digital rostering supports home care providers to do exactly that. Care comes in many forms, for many people. Home care providers need to be able to match the needs, abilities and interests of both their carers and their communities to achieve the best results. Nourish Rostering helps you to do this by optimising a variety of data points within our system and enabling you to weight them by relevancy when assigning your team to your appointments.  

These data points include travel distance, carer skills, appointment tasks, previous visits and carer and client preferences. You can then weigh these data points based on their pertinence to your unique approach to care.  

This feature is particularly useful when you need to make quick changes to your schedule. The unexpected is inevitable in home care, and you will need to make last minute adjustments to your rosters. With Nourish Rostering you can make these changes quickly, easily and confidently. Utilising the wealth of information at your fingertips to make sure continuity and quality of care is maintained.  

Of course, to be consistent with care, you need to make sure you are confident in your finances. Most standard digital rostering options focus on precisely that. Giving you an insulated schedule, that doesn’t connect to other aspects of your business. Nourish Rostering addresses this issue with our comprehensive finance suite.  

This connects your digital roster to your timesheets and invoices. Establishing a throughline for your processes and simplifying your administration. You can customise invoices with your own logo and easily export them as required. Our finance functionality also includes a time off tracker that helps you stay on top of your teams holidays. This feature is also available on your carers mobile app so they can easily review and book off work as desired.  

Our mobile app is a powerhouse of functionality for your carers, that will bring energy to your whole operation. As well as helping your carers with time off and call monitoring, it helps your team to capture the information you need on a call. This goes beyond the tasks and medication administration required.  

Our notes offer your team the chance to drive improved outcomes at the point of care. The more information you have available, the better your service can be. Our notes are easy to record and share with administrators, creating a continual feedback loop of care.  

Our mobile app includes dictation functionality, for carers on the go. This also make it easier to involve the people using your support to contribute to their care. Helping you to co-produce care that matches your unique community. 

Nourish Rostering goes beyond the basics of digital rostering functionality. Our system is codeveloped with our users, and for over 10 years has driven positive outcomes in home care across the UK. Balancing the duality of care technology to ensure efficiency never comes at the cost of human experience.  

We must crawl, walk and then run. However, as many new home care providers know, there’s plenty to trip over on the way to full speed. The journey from start to Outstanding is filled with unique home care challenges. But with the right people, and the right systems, you can face anything. After all, success is a marathon not a sprint. When you look to your future make sure you think long term. Smart investments early in your journey can help save you time, money and hassle as your business expands.  

We’ve put together a list of the 10 most common home care challenges faced by new home care providers with that in mind.  Hopefully it can give you a little guidance when you need it.  

If you would like to talk to us directly about starting your home care journey off strong, contact us here.  

Recruitment and retention are longstanding home care challenges. In Skills for Care’s 2024 State of Care Report there was a vacancy rate of 8.3% in social care jobs. 3 times higher than the national average.  

Addressing recruitment is often a matter of retention. Providing your team with a quality work environment, good conditions and understanding is essential. Investing in your people is as important as investing in your technology. You can create a rising tide of care quality with training, engagement and advancement opportunities for your team.   

Technology can make managing and championing your teams more straightforward too. Whether utilising time off functionality to simplify rostering or eLearning to make developing your skills straightforward for your team. 

Compliance is often intimidating for new home care providers. Getting the information right for your regulator is crucial. You need to be able to tell comprehensive care stories regardless of the imperial initialism haunting your dreams.  

Care management systems support home care providers to do this by recording everything you need in one central location. So, you can not only record, but also review and report your data, for your regulator. This empowers you to tell your care story, and get the rating you deserve. 

We talk in more detail about the importance of compliance in home care here. 

Home care technology offers home care providers the opportunity to ‘future proof’ their business. But what does this increasingly popular buzzword actually mean? 

The right software can help simplify your processes. More than this, it can be used to establish your best practice in an easily replicable, and scalable way. Allowing for simpler onboarding of both new carers and people utilising care.  

A common challenge for home care providers is poor communication and information sharing. Your carers are experts in their experiences. Home care software helps providers to share this expertise and experience across your whole community. 

This includes improving communication with third parties like Local authorities and healthcare services, as well as internally. In the past poor information sharing and ‘information silos’ led to duplication of effort and inconsistent care.  

Care technology addresses this challenge by simplifying the centralisation your information and making it easier to action. 

Maintaining a high standard of care in a home setting can be challenging due to limited resources and oversight. Home care technology offers a range of solutions to address this. The best of which are fully compliant with the digital social care records standards and are listed on the Assured Solutions List. Best practice can be enshrined in your processes and ensured through your system set up.  

Functionality like remote monitoring and warnings help providers to shape and share their best practice across their service. A system like Nourish Care supports home care providers to establish their approach to care, record and review their care application, and continually improve it in line with feedback from their community. 

Home care is unique in many ways. At the core of this approach to care is the nature of appointments. Home carers appreciate the sanctity of someone’s home. Home care providers appreciate the sanctity of someone’s schedule.  

Call monitoring enables carers to record their actual appointment times. Guaranteeing accurate times and locations for appointment starts. This information is vital for reporting to commissioning bodies. It is also useful for feeding back into your own processes to refine and perfect the flow of your carers through your community. 

A schedule is never straightforward in home care. Abrupt changes and unforeseen adjustments are par for the course. Navigating these home care challenges on paper or a digital spreadsheet is incredibly difficult.  

Digital rostering simplifies every step of this process. From set up to rescheduling and reporting, drag and drop rostering systems make adjusting rotas simple. Nourish Care boasts a ‘Recommend’ feature that gathers all the relevant information you have on your carers, including travel time, skills and previous relationship with the person drawing on support.  

Ensuring that whatever spot you’re in, you can make an informed decision. 

Carer burnout is a serious and understandable concern for home care providers. Home care workers can experience stress, emotional fatigue, and physical exhaustion while carrying out their responsibilities.  

As we mentioned in the Recruitment and Retention section, understanding is essential. Digital systems can promote this understanding with communication tools, personal development support and better oversight.  

Balancing costs, invoices and timesheets can be overwhelming. Especially for home care providers who are just starting out.  

There are a number of digital systems that can help you simplify this process. Nourish for home care offers a finance management suite so you can manage payments, organise payroll, and create invoices. We also offer an integration with Sage.  

Centralising your financial processes simplifies their management. It can also help you gain a clearer oversight of your finances and help you make more informed decisions about your future direction.  

Client acquisition will always be a concern for home care providers when starting out. How do you make sure you are attracting enough clients to maintain your business? 

Well, addressing the above home care challenges is a great place to start! 

Digital systems give you better oversight of your care, promoting a deeper understanding of your community and driving improved outcomes for the people who draw on your support. Which will naturally spread the word of your care quality across private buyers and public commissioners alike.  

So, you can build the future you want for your team, your business, and your community, at a pace that suits you. 

If you’d like to learn more about building for your future with Nourish as your digital partner, contact us. 

Conversation is crucial in care. Our understanding is built on our ability to listen. Everyone who provides care is well aware of this dynamic. A lesson we learned over the past ten years by working with our users to improve processes, functionality and outcomes. We are creating our Care Voice Champions to ensure we continue to keep you close to our development process. 

Too often in technology, we have a ‘story in our back pocket’. An experience someone shared with us when we first started developing software solutions. This story is a great starting point, but it can become stale over time. As a result, developers find themselves working closely to the memory of a challenge, rather than the reality. 

Take care notes as an example. The original challenge was digitising a longstanding paper process. The story of carers filling bursting filing cabinets with lonely notebooks echoed in every developer’s ears. This led to several innovations, such as digitising the note-taking process, improving the quality of information available, and making notes easier to review. However, if we stopped talking at this point the innovations would stop too. Thanks to ongoing conversations we developed more specific functionality, like dictation to make recording notes easier, triggers to encourage note-taking at specific times and reporting suites to present the information gathered in more digestible and informative ways. 

We created our Care Voice Champions to keep the conversation going. 

At the start, we plan to communicate monthly. We will review the effectiveness of this approach and adjust the time frame as necessary. Crucially, it will be entirely up to members of the Care Voice Champions group to engage with a specific topic. We do not require or expect every member of the group to engage on every topic. We appreciate how limited care provider’s time is, and we will make sure this process is swift and simple. Starting out, engagement will primarily be conducted through surveys. 

There may be times when we want to have a direct conversation with certain members. These will be requested formally, and well in advance to ensure minimal disruption to your schedule. 

The ultimate goal is to build a continuous cycle of engagement and through that strong collaborative links with our Care Voice Champions. We want to make sure that everyone is involved in our journey as a product. We need to understand how you approach care, how our system supports your approach, and how we can work together to drive better outcomes for everyone involved. 

We know this will not be an easy process. Indeed, we anticipate a few stumbles along the way. That is why it is so important to us to involve you in the process. Stumbling is a natural part of moving forward, just as honest conversations are an essential part of growth. 

If you want to have a more direct hand in our growth, please, join Care Voice Champions. 

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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.