When it comes to understanding care planning sometimes its best to start at the beginning. That’s why we’ve designed this Care Planning 101 series to help. This week we’ll be starting from the beginning and helping you to understand what care plans are, what care planning involves and how it helps you to provide people with the right care for their own individual requirements.
What is a care plan?
A plan of care is a presentation of information that easily describes the services and support being given to a person. Care plans should be put together and agreed with the person they focus on through the process of care planning and review. A care plan is made up from individual records of care, which then contribute to the overall plan of care for a person.
What does care planning involve?
- Gathering and sharing stories of the clients you work with
- A systematic review of a person’s needs
- Exploring and discussing information to help establish what’s most important
- Goal setting and working out what you’d like to achieve from an individual’s care
- Action planning – What are we going to do? Who is responsible? When will it be reviewed?
- Risk Management – how do we make a person’s care as safe as we can?
Care plans are an essential aspect to providing gold standard quality care. Not only do they help define the support & care workers’ roles in providing consistent care, but they enable the care team to customise the level and types of support for each person based on their individual needs.
Care planning ensures consistency of care
Another important function or purpose of care plans is to ensure the consistency of care a person receives. If a robust care plan is in place, staff from different shifts, rotas or visits can use the information to give the same quality of care and support. This allows people to receive a high standard of safe, effective and responsive care in a service which is well-led.
How do care plans help care teams deliver care?
Every person is unique. A one-size-fits-all approach does not effectively work. Care teams responsible for the actual delivery of care need to be constantly vigilant and be immediately responsive should there be any indication of a person’s changing needs. This could be increased or decreased and make sure that the plan of care is amended and updated as necessary, not waiting for the formal regular routine review to take place.
How can Nourish help your care planning?
Using a care plan software can enhance your care plans, giving you deeper oversight into your care home as well as the care planning app giving your care teams the ability to record care on the go and have all the essential information about the people you support in one place.
If you’d like to find out more about how Nourish can help you effectively manage your care plans and care pathways, book a personalised demo with our team today.
