Mardale Group’s care ethos is rooted in three C’s, competence, choice and compassion. Or, as Ollie Smith, Mardale’s Head of IT, put it. “We work in our residents’ home. They don’t live in our work environment.”  

This focus guides the decision making throughout their homes. ‘How can we bring information, options and understanding to the people utilising our service?’ A question they answer every day in Ardale, their family run group of bespoke homes. As well as The Marbrook Centre, a specialist neurological, dementia and stroke care services provider. 

It is no mean feat to meet the personal and varying needs of the people they support, let alone support their ambitions for tomorrow! The teams at Mardale are committed, experienced and engaged with their guiding values of competence, choice and compassion. They are also skilled at using technology to support their community. With a decade of digital experience under their belts, Mardale are adept at harnessing technology to achieve human goals. They have used Nourish Better Care to support their services for over 3 years.  

Never one to rest on their laurels, Mardale sought to improve the quality of their service, by improving the oversight of and insights into their services with technology. This led them to implementing Nourish Confidence. Our new functionality that brings audits, actions, and AI powered care plan improvement opportunities together and smoothly integrates them into care workflows on our Better Care platform. 

We sat down with Mardale’s Head of IT Ollie Smith to discuss how Nourish Confidence supports their care values, improves their approach to audits and helps them utilise AI in a responsible, impactful way for their community. 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“I’m 100% confident in the AI Care Plan Audit.”
Ollie Smith Head of IT

Why Confidence
Using technology to build understanding and champion lived experience 

Beyond Dip Testing
How Nourish Confidence moved their monthly care plan audits from a fifth of their service to the full residence

Key Categories
The way Mardale focused findings from Confidence to their unique needs  

Risk Reduction
Confidence’s significant impact on risk management at Mardale 

Richer Care Plans
Improving personalisation and detail in care plans with Confidence  

Flipping the Script
How Mardale utilised Confidence to change their focus from what peope can’t do, to what they can! 

On the Ground
We discuss Mardale’s teams experience with Confidence 

Digital Partnership
What it’s like working with Nourish 

Why did you choose to implement Nourish Confidence?

“One of the main motivations for our adoption of digital tools is to give our care teams the tools to be able to support our residents. Especially when it comes to oversight. We want our teams to be able to identify any changes in the people we support. Whether they may not be their normal selves or how they are on a regular basis. Digital tools help us factor in everyone’s history so we can better understand their present.  

“A lot of people can remember a time when it was on paper and you just wouldn’t have that oversight. You’re never going to be able to summarise a decade of paper records like that. Whereas now with electronic systems, it’s bringing all that data together and giving a true representation of how someone lives their life and how they want to live their life. In a way that is much more accessible and implementable. 

“Nourish Confidence is the next step in us championing competence, choice and compassion for the people utilising our services.”

How have you found using Nourish Confidence?

“We’re really happy with Nourish Confidence. The main tool in Confidence that caught our eye was the AI care plan audit. The reason being, a care plan is a key piece of information for how our support team can support the resident and enable them to live the way they want to live.  

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We’re able to audit every care plan in the same amount of time we would have spent dip testing care plans previously.”
Ollie Smith Head of IT

“Now, let’s say you have 300 residents and you have 20 care plan categories per each resident. That’s quite a lot, and quite standard. We would love to check them every day or even every week. But in reality, that doesn’t happen and it can’t happen. With manual care plan audits we would select a handful of residents a month and we would audit those residents and those care plans. But that still leaves, in and around, 250 other residents that potentially aren’t being checked every month. Which means they’ll fall into the next month. Over time this caused gaps to appear. You can see how this is not conducive to quality care and support. 

“Nourish Confidence has just been so powerful for our audits. The insights that we’ve been able to see, purely by the monthly run, have been game changing. What’s even better is it will scan everything all at once so you can see an overview of all residents monthly.”

How has this process impacted your oversight of your services at Mardale Group?

“We’re able to audit every care plan in the same amount of time we would have spent dip testing care plans previously. 

“When we were dip testing we’d be able to review about 20% of the people in a service a month. Care plans are incredibly detailed, and they take time to review and audit properly. For example, say one of our buildings is 82 resident capacity. We would be looking at roughly 15 residents or 20 residents a month. Which means there are 60 residents that aren’t being audited that month for their care plans. Now, thanks to Nourish Confidence, we can review them all with the level of depth and insight that they need. 

“We’ve been testing Confidence for this exact purpose since we first implemented it and I’m 100% confident in the AI Care Plan Audit.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Confidence has had a massive impact on risk reduction for us at Mardale Group. It ensures we have uniform information across the system for each resident. Honestly, we didn’t really know the extent of the issue for us before Confidence highlighted it!”
Ollie Smith Head of IT

How do you specify Nourish Confidence to your services’ needs?

“We’ve selected some key categories that we want to focus on ourselves in the Confidence reports. We started with contradictory information. That’s the first thing that we go for.  

“Because at a glance, something in the care plan has been changed and updated, which is great because it needed to. The person’s care need had changed, that happens a lot. But, outside of the care plan section, there’s critical information which hasn’t changed. So, someone may have updated the care plan but not updated the critical information. Confidence’s automatic audit tells us straight away that there’s something conflicting here. That’s such a powerful piece of information for us to easily and routinely see, it can be genuinely life changing!

“Let’s say someone’s continence needs have changed. But something in the critical information which sits outside of the care plan section hasn’t been updated to reflect the care plan change. That’s really important for us to notice and address. The continence care plan has changed, but then actually their nutrition and fluid intake care plan hasn’t been changed. 

“Confidence enables us to prioritise the improvement opportunities it highlights to us. Which ensures we are locked in on the right areas of focus for the people we support.”

Do these insights help you manage risk in your service?

“Confidence has had a massive impact on risk reduction for us at Mardale Group.  

“Summarised, a lot of the insights come back to risk, especially with contradictory information. If someone is an agency member of staff or not, it depends on where they are going to look for information. If they could look at our system and get contradicting information, it’s dangerous. 

“Our application of Nourish Confidence ensures we have uniform information across the system for each resident. Honestly, we didn’t really know the extent of the issue for us before Confidence highlighted it!”

What other information points does Confidence help you address? 

“Confidence has a lot of different useful categories which we review. Another one we use is ‘Insufficient Care Guidance’. It’s a great indicator of opportunities to improve personalisation and depth of information. 

“It highlights that we explain someone’s situation but potentially doesn’t specifically say how to care for that person. How to help that person and how to support them to be able to be independent. Whatever their goals may be, how we can help them achieve them. 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Confidence highlighted something else where we can be a little bit more specific. An opportunity to get the best outcome effectively by picking up on common times or the best methods to do it. That’s what we want technology to do for our service. Inform decision making and empower our teams to deliver outstanding care.”
Ollie Smith Head of IT

“For example, say in the care plan text we have eating and drinking. The person has a history of poor appetite and reluctance to eat. The plan explains that this person has a long history of poor appetite, low BMI, and relies on fortisips. 

“Staff are told to encourage support of oral and fluid intake and to offer food. But it doesn’t necessarily say how often to or how the person would like to be offered the food. Or what worked previously to help this person get the fluid and food that they need. 

“What makes Confidence so impactful, is that if we were doing our manual audit, we probably wouldn’t have thought anything wrong about that example. We’ve specified the current situation, we’ve specified the expected outcome, and we have specified to offer a prompt for the intake. It’s not a bad care plan. 

“But Confidence highlighted something else where we can be a little bit more specific. An opportunity to get the best outcome effectively by picking up on common times or the best methods to do it. That’s what we want technology to do for our service. Inform decision making and empower our teams to deliver outstanding care.”

What is another key category you’ve used Confidence to review at Mardale Group?

“Another key one we focus on is negative language. We go and have a look at that quite a lot. By negative language I mean our care plans sometimes were not focusing on what a resident can do. It was more focusing on what they can’t do. 

“Here’s an example. In one of our care plans, which is mental capacity assessment for decision making, we have mentioned the use of no capacity. Which is saying that the person is incapable of making a decision effectively. That’s focusing on what they can’t do. They can’t make decisions. It’s not focusing on what they can do and who can help them with it.  

“We find this negativity ripples out across their lived experience. It just makes people feel bad about themselves. It’s not personal, it’s not person-centered either. In the sense that, yes, this person is living with a condition. But they’re living with dementia, they don’t suffer from dementia. That’s an important distinction at Mardale Group, it comes back to our values, and Nourish Confidence is helping us bring our values to bear across our service. 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish Confidence is helping us bring our values to bear across our service.”
Ollie Smith Head of IT

“The AI is fantastic, can’t fault it. It’s down to how you use it. For us, focusing on a step by step approach of looking at the categories has been really effective. Starting with Contradictory Information, Insignificant Care Guidance, then Negative Language and so on works really well for us.”

How are your teams finding using Nourish?

“We do really love Nourish Confidence. We all consider it a massive support. It highlights how something could be changed. If there’s an area missing or how it could be improved, it doesn’t explicitly tell you how to improve it. That’s not what it’s for, and I think that it’s the right approach. 

“We’re professionals, we’re the people who have been trained to be in the role that we’re in. Whether it’s a nurse or creating a support plan. Confidence is the tool to highlight the information that potentially could have been missed. Our teams then address those opportunities through their experience, expertise and personal connections.”

What is it like using an AI that is explicitly insulated within that system and for social care usage? 

“Great, we needed it for a long time. I think it’s amazing and powerful and it can only get better. We’re really excited to see where it can go.”  

How do you find working with Nourish as a digital partner?

“I can’t sing your praises high enough. We absolutely love working with Nourish. We’ve worked with a number of different care systems before and there’s no comparison. The thing that I love the most about Nourish is you only partner with the best in the space. 

“You don’t try and partner with anyone that offers something to do with social care. I use the Nourish partners section if I’m looking for any other solution out there. I know that you guys have vetted them and checked them out.  

“As our Head of IT, I have regular account catch ups with your team. They’re always on hand to answer any questions, take feedback and support us. You are a genuinely forward thinking company.”

 

In 2017, the Public Health Outcomes Framework reported that 220,160 emergency hospital admissions were related to falls in the over 65 age group. A fall can have enormous repercussions to someone’s life, affecting their mobility, independence and health. Utilising Nourish and making some key changes can minimise the risk of a fall within your care service.  

Nourish Insights Dashboard

Oversight is essential for quality care, whether you’re in a family run business or a franchise. Our Insights Dashboards are built to highlight the most relevant information on your Nourish platform, in the most accessible, and actionable way for your team. Creating a clear workflow from point of data recording, through review, decision making and back to positive impact for the people you support.

Nutrition & hydration 

Staying hydrated and drinking enough fluid is important. Drinking consistently throughout the day, rather than attempting to hit the desired fluid intake in the latter half of the day, will decrease the risk of other health complications. This can include urine infections which can cause delirium and increased confusion, increasing the likelihood of a fall. Desired fluid intake and MUST scores are incorporated in Nourish, allowing you to keep an eye on the hydration and nutrition of the people you support.  

Encouraging more activity in falls prevention 

According to the NHS, exercise can decrease the risk of a fall, particularly strength and balance training. Strength and balance training can involve activities as simple as walking or dancing. Tai Chi is another exercise that can prevent falls as it emphasises on movement, balance and coordination. Activities can be logged in the Nourish app as can the level of participation and enjoyment. This will allow you to see how and if exercise has made any improvements to a person’s mobility. 

Appointments 

Appointments can be logged on the Nourish app and can be viewed as part of the daily care plan of the people you support, giving greater visibility for your care team. Seeing the podiatrist to check that nails are not overgrown or suffering any ailment that may make walking difficult. Also on footwear, you can add into the daily care plan a requirement that checks the people you support are wearing suitable and well-fitting footwear. Regular check-ups with the opticians will check the people you support are wearing the appropriate eyewearfor their needs. You can also add a note into the care plan. This gives your care team the ability to easily view who wears glasses.  

Falls Champions  

It may be useful to identify a Falls Champion for your service. Some local NHS trusts and councils hold training for Falls Champions. Champions are advocates for prevention and management of falls. They can ensure that staff are following fall management protocols. Champions can analyse data to see how and why falls are happening and implement measures to prevent this. Champions additionally ensure risk assessments are being followed for those at greater risk of a fall e.g.the use of sensor mats or alarm pendants.  

Medication management

Some types of medication and combination of medications can increase the risk of falls. Having the oversight via an eMAR solution alongside other care records and information gives the ability to monitor, manage and evaluate a person’s medications. With a view to reducing falls risks and associated complications. Being able to monitor this medication and provide visibility of symptoms among your team can increase awareness and reduce the risk of falls. As well as regular medication reviews to assist in ensuring side effects and symptoms are monitored. Nourish integrates with various eMARs, allowing you and your team to see what medication the people you support use.  

Integrations 

We designed Nourish to be the base for your digital ecosystem. We integrate with various eMAR solutions, pain management apps, eRedBag and GP Connect, encouraging interoperability in health, care and support. Additionally, we are always looking to integrate with technology supplier who can improve the lives of the people we support.  

Find out Nourish can help you to better manage falls in your care service by booking a personalised demo 

Iden Manor is a unique care home, where the purpose of history and the potential of tomorrow walk hand in hand. They pride themselves on providing an inviting space, where the character of both their long-standing Victorian manor house and their compassionate teams, combine to offer a service unlike any other.  

However, for all the little details that make them unique, they faced a challenge familiar across the sector, funding. More specifically, how to clearly evidence and justify the true cost of delivering high-quality care. 

Fortunately, they were well equipped to answer this question thanks to their innovative new solution, Nourish Transparency. 

Nourish Transparency Case Study Sections

The challenge: Justify care costs to local councils to secure appropriate funding for care. 
The approach: Use Nourish Transparency to clearly articulate, through an evidence based model, the true cost of care. 
The outcome: A well evidenced case justifying their price and securing their service. 
The impact: A more balanced, informed dialogue with commissioners 

The challenge: Evidencing the true cost of care to councils 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We noticed a shift away from us being a first-choice placement, with a stronger focus on lower-cost options.”
Jean Reeves-Yates Home Manager

Cost is at the forefront of decision making for local authorities in England. An understandable position given they are spending, on average, three quarters of their budgets on social care. In such environments the push to reduce cost can quickly outweigh the reality of care provision.  

“Following recent changes within our local council, funding has become more complex and challenging for us,” explained Jean Reeves-Yates, Home Manager for Iden Manor. “We noticed a shift away from us being a first-choice placement, with a stronger focus on lower-cost options” 

“They referred a person who was in a residential dementia setting to us. We followed our normal procedure, assessed them, costed their care and presented it to the council. They declined.”  

The challenge for Iden Manor was clear. They needed a way to demonstrate, in a structured and credible format, why their cost of care reflected the level of need, quality of provision and value to commissioners. As something more than a price point, as a transparent reflection of what safe, effective care actually requires. 

The approach: Transparency in costing brings clarity to care needs 

Iden Manor used Nourish Transparency to rebuild their costing with a detailed, evidence-based breakdown.  

“There was quite a bit of tussle back and forth with the council,” said Jean. “I do believe that they went to another home to assess the person being supported as well.”  

Red heart Red heart Quote
“I sent this costing across to our local council. This time, with clear evidence backing up our cost breakdown.”
Jean Reeves-Yates Home Manager

By switching to Nourish Transparency to help them make their case, Iden Manor were able to clearly articulate a new level of detail when presenting to their council. 

Including: 

“I then costed it using Nourish Transparency,” Jean continued. “I sent this costing across to our local council. This time, with clear evidence backing up our cost breakdown.” 

Cost of care shown on Nourish Transparency's Funding Overview

The outcome: The best case for the best care 

“They accepted the updated offer we provided!” said Jean.  

“Of course, I don’t know what other providers had costed, or what the council were paying previously. But I do know that the level of care required meant we needed to charge at our higher rates.” 

Iden Manor used Nourish Transparency to provide the required evidence and cost analysis to secure funding. While final placement decisions always depend on multiple factors, Transparency specifically enabled Iden Manor to: 

The impact: Changing the cost of care conversation 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“It’s already proving far more beneficial than I originally thought it would.”
Jean Reeves-Yates Home Manager

Iden Manor used Nourish Transparency to change the conversation they were having with their commissioner. They moved the discussion from  

Can this be delivered at a lower cost?’ 

To something more meaningful: 

‘What is genuinely required to meet this person’s needs safely and well?’ 

That shift matters. Because sustainable care cannot be built on a race to the lowest price, it has to be grounded in a clear understanding of need, resource, and quality. 

The second conversation is one where Iden Manor have the edge. And when conversations turn back to cost, they have Nourish Transparency. 

“It’s already proving far more beneficial than I originally thought it would,” concluded Jean. 

In an increasingly competitive and cost-sensitive market, clarity is critical. First of all, so providers can secure placements. But beyond that, for ensuring that care providers are funded well enough to adequately support their communities and sustainably enough to continue to do so into the future. 

If you’d like to find out more about how Nourish Transparency can help you secure your future, contact us directly today. 

Book a Demo

Value is a vital when operating a care home. It is imperative for providers to make the right decisions, with the right returns, to maintain a successful service. Which is why finding the right digital partner is crucial when choosing technology for small care homes.

We spoke to Subhaan Iqbal, IT Director and Compliance Lead at Principle Care Homes, about his experience. Subhaan has extensive experience supporting care providers with their digitisation, and has learned the importance of getting started at the right time. They wanted to establish their technology before expanding their locations, and they found the perfect partner in Nourish.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We want to use our systems to create a world where everybody feels special.”
Subhaan Iqbal IT Director and Compliance Lead

Watch the video below to learn how Nourish Care works with the team at Principle Care home to deliver the results they want. Including how the Nourish Partnership Programme helps them build the right digital ecosystem for their service. There are a lot of different types of technology for small care homes. With so many options to choose from, and so many decisions to make, the NPP can help you find the best technology for your community.

You can watch the Principle Care Homes case study here below.

Principle Care Homes

Care and support come in many forms. A tapestry of individual threads, rich in the colours of the dreams and ambitions in each community. St Anne’s Community Services understands this potential, as they provide a range of services unified by a single vision. To live a life without limits, by making a difference every day. Their commitment to this vision is what makes them one of the North of England’s leading charities.   

Their support covers a wide range of areas, including nursing, care for people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, homelessness, substance use, alcohol detox, safe spaces for women and mental health services. This support primarily takes the form of outreach day services, emergency accommodation, supported living and residential services. All underpinned by their philosophy to try to reduce any limits they can in terms of people doing what they want to do with their lives.  

St Anne’s know they need to evolve with the needs of their community to achieve their vision. That’s why they are launching a new strategy for supporting lives without limits. Having chosen Nourish Care as their digital partner over a year ago, they were well acquainted with our approach to care and support technology. That’s why when looking for a system to help them with their incident management, they chose Nourish Safety. We spoke with their Director of Operations, Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales, about their new strategy, why they chose Nourish Safety, and how their rollout progressed.  

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We’re just about to embark on a new strategy. It will focus on enabling and coaching our staff to look at how we support people. How we enable people to do what they want through collaboration and communication. Not always ‘doing for’, but ‘doing with’. Nourish Safety is really helping with that, and we’re so excited for what’s still to come too!”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

In this Nourish Safety case study, we discuss: 

Looking to the future 
The two key focuses of St Anne’s new approach 

Championing people 
Lyndsay explains why St Anne’s chose Nourish Safety as part of building their new systems approach and move away from disjointed workarounds 

All on board 
How St Anne’s used ‘nudge theory’ to help their team understand and utilise the benefits of Nourish Safety 

Ease of use, excellence of impact 
The benefits of Nourish Safety being felt across St Anne’s teams 

Data-driven decisions 
How Nourish Safety helps surface important information, and inform more effective support 

The future 
Why St Anne’s are so excited about what’s still to come 

Can you talk us through your new approach to helping people live lives without limits? 

“Absolutely, there are two main things we’re working on. The first is trauma-informed care. We want our teams to understand, not what’s wrong with people, but what’s happened to them. Their ‘why’. Why they may communicate, respond or behave in a certain way. We’re trying to focus less on risk assessing and more on safety planning in terms of risk assessment in itself.  

“If I said to you, ‘I’m going to do a risk assessment on you’, you might think: ‘Of what? What am I a risk to?’ It’s not the kind of terminology that you’d want to take into a modern social care world. But if I said, ‘Should we create a safety plan so we can support you to remain safe?’ That’s a different conversation. It’s a different way of approaching care and support.  

Red heart Red heart Quote
“I wanted to bring Nourish Safety in because I’m always asking: ‘How can I make it as easy as possible for the managers to run their services?”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“The other avenue we’re going down in our new approach is co-production. Which is something that’s been around forever. But doing it well.  What we don’t ever capture is the ‘why?’. The outcome really is the ‘why?’. Why does that person want to do that? There’ll be practical reasons why, there’ll be emotional and psychological reasons why.

“But we can shy away from that in social care, especially in care planning. We can become too prescriptive. We want to understand context better, and that means making better observations and understanding the ‘why?’ behind people’s actions and goals.” 

Why did you choose Nourish Safety to help you achieve this ambition?

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish Safety helps with our processes and helps keep our team on track with what they need to do. While allowing them to also use the flows and the information to do that learning piece in a way we haven’t been able to before. Previously we were using a mix of excel sheets and online documents. Having it all in one easy to action place is a game changer.”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“Nourish Safety is a big part of our approach because it factors into our new operating model. We want to move away from the registered manager being the be all end all of responsibility and accountability. Don’t get me wrong, they are, but in social care we always see roles and responsibilities bleed into each other.

“One of the drives behind my role as our director, and why I wanted to bring Nourish Safety in is because I’m always asking: ‘How can I make it as easy as possible for the managers to run their services? I don’t really want them to be registered managers. What I want them to be is quality of life delivery managers.

“I don’t want them to be focused completely on governance and compliance. Yes, that keeps people safe, but it also settles for just letting people exist. I want them to have as much time as they possibly can to teach the staff how to coach, mentor and enable the people we support. If they’re just running around with audits doing compliance, it can lead to focusing on the wrong things. Then their job becomes very task-focused, instead of people-focused.

“Nourish Safety helps with our processes and helps keep our team on track with what they need to do. While allowing them to also use the flows and the information to do that learning piece in a way we haven’t been able to before. Previously, we were using a mix of Excel sheets and online documents. Having it all in one easy-to-action place is a game-changer.”

How did your previous experience with Nourish influence your decision? 

“A big factor for us is the way Safety is embedded in Better Care. All of this functionality being in one system is a huge benefit. No one is scrabbling around to find the information they need. A system is a big part of a culture, isn’t it? We’ve all used systems where we think, ‘Goodness, this is frustrating’.  When we brought in Nourish Better Care our team adapted to it quickly.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“It makes admin simple and gives us more time to focus on what matters to us. Once our managers saw Nourish Safety, they became a big driver for its adoption!”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“We started with a big project group of over 30 people. Managers who could become Nourish champions within our service. They taught all their peers, which made it a very organic rollout. We took the same approach with Nourish Safety.

“When I introduced the idea of Nourish Safety, it was before I’d even made a business case for it. I went through the system with each of our management teams to ensure engagement. We made sure we wanted the system, that we knew how it would help us.

“Our managers really bought into the potential of Nourish Safety. It’s a system where we can document everything we need in one place. It’s in specific flows that we can match to our new strategy. It makes admin simple and gives us more time to focus on what matters to us. Once our managers saw Nourish Safety, they became a big driver for its adoption!”

How has your rollout of Nourish Safety gone?

“It was quite straightforward; config only took us about 3-4 weeks. We went live across 150 locations on the same day, talk about a big bang! 

“It’s been very easy because we got everybody on board. I know it sounds a bit cliché, but they genuinely are. We focus on the positive impact and elevating them.  

“From the beginning, we explained how Nourish Safety is something that will completely help you in your roles and here’s why. If you explain something to somebody in context and how it’ll benefit them, it’s a lot easier for them to get on board. 

“It’s our application of nudge theory. We know no one reads blanket emails; it’s simply not an effective way for us to reach our frontline roles. That’s not the arena they operate in. Instead, we cascade information through people. 

“We did webinars. I went to managers meetings to go through it with them. We explored the flows and what we needed to record. I gathered feedback from the managers and made sure everyone knows this is a very much a system for operations.  

“As an operations team, we haven’t owned a system before. So, we’re really embracing that and embedding it into our culture. Which means on every single visit there’s a question on how we use Nourish. 

“‘How are you using Nourish Safety?’ ‘Is there anything we can help you with?’ They all come back to me. I take them to the Nourish project lead. She goes straight back to the service and completes that loop. We want to give feedback so our managers know that anything they’re bringing to us, we act on straightaway. It’s just continual like that, really. It’s a continual conversation.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“To do that you’ve got to be all on the same page. That’s something Nourish Safety really helps us achieve. It simplifies our workflows and makes it easier for us to share best practice.”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

Can you give us an example of this continuous improvement in action? 

“I was recently visiting a St Anne’s service. A new hire was making notes on his device, so I asked him to show me his workflow. He wasn’t following the correct flow, so I offered to show him the right way. It took about two minutes to go through it.

“He did a test and it went perfectly. He was delighted with the success, and I went around to all the other team members in that service. It took me about 15 minutes and by the time I’d left, everyone is using it. I put together a quick case study with some screenshots and sent it to all our employees.

“We received really positive feedback in response. It’s that nudge approach. It’s got to be through many different methods to ensure you’re reaching everyone in a way that resonates. To do that you’ve got to be all on the same page. That’s something Nourish Safety really helps us achieve. It simplifies our workflows and makes it easier for us to share best practice. All of which support our vision of getting people to live their life without limits.”

How have St Anne’s teams responded to Nourish Safety? 

“Our teams found Nourish Safety very easy to use. Once they know that they’ve got to click on that down arrow and go to the incidents it’s simple. Everything flows together between Better Care and Safety. We mapped out our process from the start and that’s key. If you can map out the process simply, people understand and get on board. 

“Our support workers really like how quickly they can raise incidents now. The escalations work really well. Which then saves time for our managers on a wider scale by simplifying the whole process.

“The Positive Behavioural Support (PBS) team have got all the information instantly as well, improving our ability to respond to behaviours that challenge. They’re finding it so useful to get to go straight back to managers, instead of waiting for a referral.” 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“With the current dashboards, especially the behavioural ones, we’ve been able to very quickly identify factors that we hadn’t identified through our previous data polls.”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“The more steps I can remove for our managers by using Nourish, the more everyone in our community benefits. It means our managers can spend more time doing what they need to do with their teams, and our teams can more effectively support the people utilising our service to live their lives without limits.”

How does Nourish Safety help you utilise your data more effectively?

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Prior to Nourish Safety that person was on about 120 incidents of ligature a month. Last time I checked the dashboard that had come down to 30. Which is an incredible development on their journey to living a life without limits.”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“Nourish Safety gives us so much more context. When we were putting data into Power BI for our previous incident reports, it was difficult for us to see it on a personal level. Whereas with the current dashboards, especially the behavioural ones, we’ve been able to very quickly identify factors that we hadn’t identified through our previous data polls. The dashboards are more intuitive, and you can see things from different perspectives depending on your filters.

“Now we can quickly notice trends and respond to them. For example, one person we work with has a lot of ligature incidents, which can be quite distressing. Through the prompts from Nourish Safety and the workflow, we’ve been able to see a pattern emerging in their actions. This enabled us to establish better communication with their Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT). We have more detailed information, and can share it with them quicker, which improves the treatment the person using our service receives. We’re seeing these incidents reduce as a result and that is a positive experience for everybody.

“We can access information and share it quicker because of how the escalations work in Nourish Safety. The detail and workflow are game changing. With the email pulling through the escalation, the severity and the incident type. Then filtering it to the relevant levels of the organisation and departments, our people were able to coordinate our approach quicker.

“Prior to Nourish Safety that person was on about 120 incidents of ligature a month. Last time I checked the dashboard that had come down to 30. Which is an incredible development on their journey to living a life without limits.”

What are Nourish like as a digital partner for St Anne’s Community Care?

Red heart Red heart Quote
“I love how you build products for care and support. I couldn’t ask for more, with Nourish we feel like we can do anything!”
Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales Director of Operations

“Excellent, I couldn’t ask for more. I think it doesn’t matter who I interact with at Nourish, I always feel that you all believe in your vision and that’s important for me. It feels to me that what you say you’re doing, you’re actually doing. We helped build Nourish Safety, we can see where you listened to us and applied our feedback. It’s good to work with a partner you can explore things with. 

“I’m very excited about our future with Nourish. Whenever I speak to Nourish, or hear people from Nourish at conferences, it’s so refreshing. I love the ideas you have. It’s clear you are pushing for change, you want to help move social care forward and not just rest on your laurels as a company, which is great. 

“I love how you build products for the sector. Co-producing them with providers and people with lived experience. I’m feeling quite excited about the possibilities. Really, it feels like the art of the possible rather than ‘that’s good enough’. 

“I think social care is used to ‘That’s good enough’, but with Nourish we feel like we can do anything!”

Care Concern Group are a fast growing and highly regarded person-led care provider in the UK. They support people in a range of locations with a wider array of personalities, and needs. In order to best support their communities, they needed a system that wrapped around their service. With so many options available, several already in use in different homes, Care Concern Group looked for a digital partner. One that would work with them to build a system rich in detail, understanding and accessibility. Crucially, with so many different homes, Care Concern Group needed oversight. The ability to view the full field of their care and drill down when and where they desired so they could respond efficiently, and effectively, at scale. They found the perfect solution in Nourish Insights dashboards We spoke to Quality Manager Richard Maddison to learn why. 

If you’d like to learn about how Nourish’s customisability, ease of use and compliance support Care Concern Group you can read that Case Study here.  

How are our Insight Dashboards supporting your care? 

“I like Insights. There are so many ways to filter information. I love that you can filter by region and by country. That’s really helpful for us as we have homes in varied places. Plus, it keeps getting better. Over the last six months you’ve added some really useful dashboards like weight monitoring. 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“I was asked to look at a group of new homes we brought across and Insights dashboards made it so simple. All I had to do was filter for those four homes and everything I needed was right in front of me. As a quality manager that’s invaluable oversight, and it’s at the touch of a button.”
Richard Maddison Quality Manager

“Insights dashboards put so much information at our fingertips. It’s straightforward for us to filter out what we need and drill down to the relevant information. So, if one of our Registered Directors wants to examine their homes they can filter to the relevant ones and see what they need at a glance. This is incredibly useful for ensuring quality while still maintaining the person-led, community centred approach to care that we champion.  

“I was asked to look at a group of new homes we brought across and Insights dashboards made it so simple. All I had to do was filter for those four homes and everything I needed was right in front of me. As a quality manager that’s invaluable oversight, and it’s at the touch of a button.” 

What information do you use Insights dashboards to understand? 

“All of it. For example, if I was looking at the ABC records, and I was only looking at certain ones for the younger people’s services we run. I click a button, filter the irrelevant ones out and all the information I need is just sat there, right in front of me. It’s such a relief and a time saver to not go delving through files looking for what I need.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“You can see what homes are using Nourish and what ones aren’t yet by the quality of the data we have.”
Richard Maddison Quality Manager

How does this information feed back into how you provide care? 

“It goes all the way up to the top. Our Director of Quality Jackie does a monthly summary on all the data that she needs. Whether that’s falls data, ABC data, MUST data, whatever she needs. You can see what homes are using Nourish and what ones aren’t yet by the quality of the data we have.” 

Can you share a specific example of an Insights Dashboard you’ve found particularly impactful? 

“The Weight Monitoring dashboard is a game changer for Care Concern Group. Because with the Weight Monitoring dashboard you can see the interactions, which means we can easily see what ones were missed. You see it in a box straight away and you can just click on the icon and it opens all the information you need. It’s so easy to share that information with the relevant parties. We can send a context message to the manager to draw their attention to it.” 

So Nourish helps improve your oversight and your responsiveness? 

“Absolutely, internal communication is another thing I really love about Nourish. We use the context messaging all the time, especially to support our oversight of managers. Our staff send interactions across directly to the manager as soon as it’s done. It’s just fired across by context message to share the information, you can add your explanation for sending it as a note and fire it off. It makes following up on insights and sharing vital information between our teams and managers so much simpler.  

“It’s the same with Accidents & Incidents. Everything is centralised and simplified. If there was an accident, we can record it, send the escalation email and start the triage process. All of the interactions we need to follow are linked on Nourish, turning a complicated and multi-faceted piece of administration into a clear step by step procedure to follow.  Normally you have to do all of this manually, and with Nourish it’s so much easier for us.” 

Does Nourish help support the structure of your processes as well as their efficiency? 

“These benefits go throughout Care Concern Group. When I mentioned our carers and directors highlighting specific incidents of data points to our managers, Nourish is also supporting our manager when they review information and respond, to make sure they’ve done what they needed to as well. Have they informed the right people? Have they told the local authority? The regulator? Safeguard? Whoever they need to tell.  

“The pathways are so clear, you click a button, say yes and it sends you down the next pathway. It’s brilliant. I explained this to the managers and staff as well. It’s not that we know you’re not doing it. It’s just the fact that this is assisting and making it easier for you to do because you don’t have to worry about it. If you click the right button, Nourish is going to send you in the right direction and let you know what you’ve got to do.” 

Principle Care Homes is a new generation of care homes. Co-founded by brother and sister, Ashish and Nisha Goyal they aim to provide extraordinary care and support and truly exceptional environments. They operate Broomfield Village in Chelmsford with plans to open Heron Manor in Hampshire this Summer. Principle Care Homes support residential, dementia, respite and nursing residents.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We want to use our systems to create a world where everybody feels special.”
Subhaan Iqbal IT Director and Compliance Lead

At the heart of Principle lies a simple yet powerful mission: to make people feel special. In their service every individuals uniqueness is celebrated as an expression of who they are. A demanding charge, but one they fulfill with enthusiasm, skill and a trusted digital partner in Nourish.

We sat down with Subhaan Iqbal, IT Director and Compliance Lead at Principle Care Homes, to discuss how partnering with Nourish helped them streamline processes, create efficiencies and improve oversight.

Principle Care Homes joined Nourish four years ago. Integration was a key focus. “We didn’t want systems for system’s sake,” said Subhaan. Since then they have developed their digital ecosystem to meet the needs of their community.

They have worked closely with the Nourish Partnership Programme during this time to build out their digital ecosystem. This has helped them ensure they utilise technology to improve outcomes for everyone involved with their service. Sharing their direction with Nourish and working towards the same goal has helped Principle Care Homes to get the results they want, and Nourish to better understand their challenges and ambitions.

Case Studies

Lifeways are the UK’s largest specialist support provider for adults with complex needs. A longstanding leader in personalised, contextual care and support, they celebrated 30 years of transforming lives in 2025. Never an organisation to rest on their laurels, three years ago Lifeways launched their ambitious Transformation Plan. The plan oversaw huge investments in properties, training, systems and pay, as well as a fresh strategy, new purpose, new vision, new mission, and new strategic objectives. All aimed at achieving their goal to be both the employer of choice and the provider of choice in care and support.

group_add

0

Care Professionals
group

0

People Supported
house

0

Services
money

£ 0 K

Saved Annually

Their Transformation Plan is a huge success, earning a range of accolades and nominations in 2025, including several for their application and implementation of technology. At the start of their initiative 3 years ago, Lifeways’ care management system was entirely paper based. Today, 8,000 Lifeways team members utilise Nourish Better Care to support over 4,000 people across 1,100 services. This has reduced paperwork and improved sustainability for Lifeways by eliminating unnecessary admin and saving them on average £120K annually.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish has been central to our transformation and has supported our ambition to make Lifeways the provider of choice in our sector.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

Primarily, Lifeways provide supported living as well as some residential and mental health services. We chatted to Lifeways’ Chief Transformation Officer, Amanda Brooke, to learn more. Amanda was shortlisted for ‘Digital Innovator of the Year’ at the Social Care Leadership Awards 2025 for spearheading their digital transformation and was a winner at the Care Home Awards in May 2025 for her successful implementation of Nourish.

Our conversation carried us through their transformation journey, the benefits felt across their service and why they are so excited for the future.

In this Nourish Better Care Case Study, we discuss:

Lifeways’ transformation plan
This focuses on people, processes, and systems, improving culture and streamlining processes through automation and digitisation

The rollout
How Lifeways got people to buy in across their services

Benefits
Some of the improvements they are already seeing

Risk management
How Lifeways are using digital features to improve information security and care quality

Data
How Nourish helps Lifeways to collect richer data

Time saving
The efficiencies that have been unlocked

Oversight and Escalation
How Lifeways is utilising Nourish and other systems to improve the quality of their reporting and responding at every level

The future
What’s next for Lifeways’ Transformation Plan and Nourish

What was it like when you first came into Lifeways and started leading the digital transformation?

“Everything was managed on paper, whether that was the roster, appointment times, care management, reviewing and reporting. We were sending timesheets out in envelopes every week and hand-writing notes at the end of each day. It was all so time consuming. None of that is caring for people, none of that time is spent where it needs to be.

“My general approach to everything we’ve done in transformation is to make sure that we’re removing the stuff that’s getting in the way of the important job.

“For a support worker, their role is to support the person in their care. It is not to do a whole load of administrative work. For managers, their time should be spent with their teams, developing them, leading them, coaching them and supporting them. It should not be sitting there at their desk wrestling with handwritten time sheets trying to ensure that people get paid and billing is accurate.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish helps us remove the noise for our teams. With functionality that helps us achieve the goals we set around quality improvement, reduction in medication errors, improving general oversight, strengthening governance around our support plans and enhancing the quality of interactions that we’re having with the people we support.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

What did you want to achieve with your digitisation?

“Nourish helps us remove the noise for our teams. With functionality that helps us achieve the goals we set around quality improvement, reduction in medication errors, improving general oversight, strengthening governance around our support plans and enhancing the quality of interactions that we’re having with the people we support.

“But fundamentally, we wanted to be able to enable people to have the information they need at the time they need it. So, they can concentrate on the person they’re supporting.”

lifeways feature image 2

How did you rollout Nourish across your services?

“We launched Nourish in November 2023 with 12 pilot services. We’ve since successfully rolled it out across nearly 1,100 services. We designed a phased, feedback-led rollout. Staff feedback from early pilots provided invaluable insights that guided our configuration of the system, device allocation and identified the additional resources required by our support workers. This collaboration shaped our training, hardware deployment, and change management. With each subsequent phase, we have continued to refine the process making it smoother and more efficient.

“We also built cross-functional project teams, integrating operational, quality, and data experts to embed the system effectively. This approach ensured meaningful change, not just technological replacement.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“It just makes everything easier.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

What was the rollout like for your support workers?

“The real challenge we saw coming was getting everyone to buy in to the new system. Our support workers have quite a diverse age range. It is fair to say that some of the older team members were really worried about what it was going to be like.

“So, we used change champions to share their experience, peer to peer, and we put together a video detailing what ‘A Day in the Life’ with Nourish looked like. It really helped us in our rollout because we wanted to be able to show what Nourish was really like. And how it helped us to spend more time with the people we support and made it easier to know more about them.

“Change is scary. The more we could show our teams that, ‘actually, this isn’t horrible, it’s easy to use and it’s really going to support you in your role’, the more it helped us show our teams the reality of Nourish. It just makes everything easier.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish saves support workers a significant amount of admin time per day with dictated care logging at the point of care and collated handover notes. The impact of getting this time back can be felt across our services.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

What are the key benefits you’ve seen from your rollout?

“We’ve made so many changes over the past two years as part of our Transformation Plan that I was honestly expecting to see a bit of a dive in some of our statistics. I thought our engagement would take a dip because we’ve been asking so much of people. I also expected our family satisfaction and that of the people we support to possibly dip as they were impacted by the changes too. In reality, we’ve seen the opposite, which has been amazing. Nourish has been central to our transformation and has supported our ambition to make Lifeways the provider of choice in our sector.

“Nourish saves support workers a significant amount of admin time per day with dictated care logging at the point of care and collated handover notes. The impact of getting this time back can be felt across our services.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Two significant improvements we’ve seen are: our employee engagement has gone from 59% to 74% and the quality of our compliance went from 77% to 92.5%”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

“Two significant improvements we’ve seen are employee engagement and compliance. Our employee engagement has gone from 59% to 74% across our whole organisation as a result of the transformation journey we have been on.

“Likewise, the quality of our compliance went from 77% to 92.5% (inclusive of Fulcrum mock inspections). Nourish played a key role in these improvements. The quality oversight it provides across our data and services simplifies processes and elevates the overall quality of our compliance.”

How does Nourish help you manage risk?

“The safety and security of the people we support is paramount to us. There are several features with Nourish that have helped us reduce risk. For example, our medication errors have come down quite considerably. That’s a big one for us and obviously huge for the people we support.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Moving all of that paperwork onto a digital platform is a game changer for us. It makes it so much easier to record, review and respond effectively across our services.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

“We’ve also seen GDPR risk hugely reduced because it’s so much easier for us to manage digital documents than our previous physical records. Moving all of that paperwork onto a digital platform is a game changer for us. It makes it so much easier to record, review and respond effectively across our services.”

How has digitising with Nourish impacted your data quality and application?

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Since implementing Nourish Better Care we’ve definitely started collecting much richer data, it gives so much more value to that care record.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

“First and foremost, we met the NHS requirement to digitise social care records. Obviously, that was a big tick in the box which supports us from a tendering and procuring perspective. As well as ensuring we are in line with the government’s future plans for health and social care data. We’re on a bit of a journey with how we use our data, which is one part of what we have termed ‘Transformation Phase 2’

“Since implementing Nourish Better Care we’ve definitely started collecting much richer data. We’re especially getting richer data on the support that’s being logged by our carers. The handsets play a huge role. A lot of our team members are now using speech-to-text notes, instead of writing everything down. That’s led to much better-quality care notes. Things are being recorded as they happen. Rather than being written down at the end of the shift when they’re in a rush. In some cases, people we support are adding their views of their support onto Nourish as well.  Then those notes are appended with photos, which is, again, so much richer. They give so much more value to that care record.”

How does Nourish help your team save time?

“We saved time across a lot of our processes thanks to Nourish. As I said previously, on average Nourish saves our support workers the written admin time at the end of the day. That time then goes straight back into better support for the person that we’re supporting.

“We’re also seeing time saved on handovers because of the way Nourish can manage the handover information, as well as time saved through the quality checking functionality. Alerts are incredibly useful, both staff and managers receive them, and managers can see the information on the Insights dashboards we’ve built. This means they have all the information they need without having to hunt through books and paper files.

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We saved time across a lot of our processes thanks to Nourish.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

“All the information we need is much more accessible and much, much easier to get to. The benefits of which are felt throughout our services, from time saving to the quality of our support.”

How do the Insights dashboards and oversight factor back into your care?

“It’s how we’re using it in the governance. The key idea is that they all escalate up together. So a manager can come in and look at their dashboards in the morning and immediately sees if there is anything they need to review or look into, it’s all there to hand. 

Red heart Red heart Quote
“Nourish is a fantastic tool for sitting at the centre of our digital care ecosystem making it easy for us to review and escalate our combined data.”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

“When you combine it with the other data in our dashboards, you can see how that aligns with any incidents that have been logged in integrated systems. We can review our shift patterns, as well as the check in and check out patterns. Our managers are looking at the whole picture of safe and effective staffing and any incident management because we’re combining the data across our systems. Nourish is a fantastic tool for sitting at the centre of our digital care ecosystem making it easy for us to review and escalate our combined data.”

Can you talk me through this escalation process?

“From the individual services, information is escalated to the area manager. They can look across all of the services they manage and see all of that information combined. They can then identify any trends, patterns or flags that might indicate an emerging issue.

“In our dashboards that’s all combined with our training data as well. So, you can see whether there’s anyone that you need to flag for any training compliance based on the people they’re supporting that day, that week, and so on. It gives us that holistic overview.

“We can then go up another level and look at the regional view or divisional view. And above that I can look at the whole organisational level. It all combines at each level making it easier to see where there are any concerns and where we have exemplar services and practices.

“This is part of the daily routine across Lifeways. You come in, do your checks, review what’s happened, look for alerts or flags. This ensures a clear oversight of our services. Which in turn enables us to react effectively and focus our attention on the services that need it. Just as Nourish helps our carers focus their efforts on the things that truly make a difference in the lives of the people we support.”

What are the next steps of your transformation plan?

“We finished our rollout in the summer, so we still have a lot of embedding to do. You can’t just give everyone these tools and expect they’re all going to use them consistently from day one?

“We’re seeing some really amazing behaviour from services and some exemplar work. But when you’ve got over 4,000 people being supported across the UK, it’s tricky to ensure consistent system use by everyone. For example, each person has around 17 support plan sections in Nourish. So we’ve got quite a job to do going through all that data to validate them.

“At the start of our Transformation journey we brought all our managers together and collaborated on our plan, values and our vision. This made sure it was one strategy from the organisation, not just a top-down directive. We’re going to get them all back together again shortly to look at how we’re embedding this first phase. We want people to share their experiences so it’s a more peer-to-peer process, building consistency and excellence into our system use.”

Red heart Red heart Quote
“We are confident Nourish is the digital care partner to help us achieve our goals!”
Amanda Brooke Chief Transformation Officer

How does Nourish factor into the next steps of your transformation plan?

“Oh we have got quite a long roadmap of changes we want to carry on making with Nourish. We’re looking at additional support plan sections and additional data sets, such as level of need.

“There’s also a number of tweaks and changes with the way that we use the tool that we want to go through. Nourish is highly customisable, and the more time we spend with it, the more aware we become of how we can apply it to the specific needs of our services.

“Ultimately, our goal is to be able to report on the outcomes that we are achieving with the people that we support. After all, that’s the most important thing!”

You have no shortage of ambition, do you?

“There’s so much more that we’re working on as part of our Transformation Phase 2 Plan. We are confident Nourish is the digital care partner to help us achieve our goals!”

Work with Nourish

Learn more about working with us, book a demo today!

Digital care record systems have gone from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have’ in social care. Most providers have moved to a digital system or are in the process of implementing one. With widespread digital uptake the question has changed from; ‘are you using a digital system?’ to ‘are you using the right digital system for your service?’

Just under two years ago the government launched its ‘Digitising Social Care’ campaign, delivering the three year £150 million investment for digitally transforming adult social care, as was set out in the 2021 white paper, People at the Heart of Care.

This campaign built on a decade of digitisation in Social Care. Driven in part by the pandemic. That saw care providers take on a variety of different digital systems to help them deliver outstanding care.

The driving force of the ‘Digitising Social Care’ campaign has focussed on ensuring 80% of providers, and at least 80% of people in receipt of care, have a Digital Social Care Record (DSCR) that is compliant with their standards in place by March 2024. While it fell slightly shy of this target. There has still been a significant uptake in digital social care records. From the 40% of providers using them at the start of the campaign. The uptake reflects the benefits of digital systems in care, and the necessity of compliance with the established DSCR standards. These positive results have led to the government extending funding for the campaign until March 2026.

Evaluating your system

Nourish Care was the first system to join the NHS England Assured Solutions List back in 2021. Since then, the list has grown significantly, so how do you choose the right one?

Incompatibility between systems and services is a rising source of operational frustration for providers. ‘All-in-one’ systems can be limited by the applicability and lack the resources to support more complex or person-centred care, while specialised systems can be disconnected, leaving your team to fill in the gaps between them manually.

Routine system evaluations are a great way to uncover and address these frustrations. This process involves identifying the issues with the platform you are using and evaluating the impact of this issue on your organisation. It takes time and effort to establish the best criteria sets for your service. We have included a guide which you can use to help you get started.

It takes a village

Digitisation has impacted everyone involved in care, so it is best practice to include your entire organisation in the evaluation process. Any frustrations caused by your digital system will be felt by carers and coordinators alike.

Your organisation has multiple roles and responsibilities, and it is important to involve them in your evaluation process through interviews and surveys. An example of some common roles are:

If possible, you should also involve the people who utilise your service in this process, such as when evaluating the effectiveness of integrations with other systems like PainChek or GP Connect as well as circle of care functionality like a family portal.

The more experiences you can account for when evaluating your system, the more complete your picture of its impact will be.

Considering your people

Digitisation in Social Care happened at such a rapid pace since COVID that, understandably, some people have been left behind. When evaluating the impact of your system it is important to consider not just the functionality, but also the user experience.

Do your team feel confident not only with the system, but with the support they have around it? Are there resources and training available to help your team improve their understanding of the system? Is there a customer support team they can reach out to for guidance and support?

Many issues with digital systems come from their misapplication. When evaluating your current digital platform, it is vital to consider your team’s comfort with the system. It might be a matter of reviewing and reworking the way you are implementing the system, as opposed to changing your system all together.

The right roadmap

To provide outstanding care, you must constantly be reviewing and improving upon your processes in a responsive and caring way. It is natural to expect the same of your system, as you both adapt to the always evolving reality of care provision.

Digital skills develop over time. With that time it is common to look for more ways to apply your skills to support your care. Such as through data reporting and analysis. By routinely reviewing the capabilities of yourself and your system. You can make sure you are maximising the benefits of your digitisation journey.

Evolving standards for digital care record systems

The new DSCR standards must be fully met by everybody on the ASL. They represent the next step of Social Care’s digitisation journey. An evolving emphasis on data, security and interoperability that reflects the success and potential of digital software in care. 

The new compliance regulations were announced last year and Nourish has been busy ensuring that it meets each of the 14 standards. This level of screening will mean that only software suppliers who meet stringent standards will be able to remain on the NHS Assured Solutions List.

The power of knowledge

With so many options available to care providers for digital systems, it is the perfect time to review the needs of your service and community. There is a wealth of suppliers eager to explain their system and its capabilities to you. By knowing what you have and what you want from a digital platform. You will be well-equipped to get what you need.

At Nourish we are well versed in helping people to transition from underperforming digital care record systems to ours. We have resources, guides and team members who would be delighted to talk to you about the process further. If you would like to learn more contact us.

Continuous Improvement

Nourish Confidence

Nourish Confidence brings audits, action plans and AI-assisted care plan reviews into one place, helping care teams identify risks, prioritise improvements and track progress.

What is Nourish Confidence?

When information is spread across different systems important signals can be difficult to spot early.

Care and support plans may be sampled, audits completed in spreadsheets, actions tracked in inboxes, and incidents recorded separately. Dedicated teams provide individualised care every day, yet without an integrated view, understanding the whole picture can be more difficult.

Nourish Confidence changes that. It pulls the right information into one place, enabling teams to gain clearer visibility of emerging themes and a sharper sense of what to prioritise next. Nourish Confidence brings audits, actions, and improvement opportunities into one platform – designed for care workflows – so teams can identify risks early, act quickly, and continuously improve without adding manual burden.

 

A look at Nourish Confidence

Video placeholder image

The benefits of Nourish Confidence

Safer, more consistent support
Earlier visibility of themes helps teams adjust practice before issues escalate.
Clearer, more aligned care plans
Teams can ensure care plans are consistent, clear and truly reflective of each person’s individual needs.
Better follow up
Linked information reduces missed steps and supports more reliable post-incident actions.
Visible service improvement
Across the service, people gain a clearer, more aligned understanding of quality and progress across the service.

Where Nourish Confidence fits in your organisation

Confidence works seamlessly with your care workflows, it’s integrated, not added on. You can bring Confidence into your organisation in two ways:

  • As part of Better Care care planning product
  • Combined with Nourish Safety incident management for a complete governance and risk solution

Key features

Suite of Audits

Reduce risk and ensure audits are conducted promptly and consistently with pre-built, adaptable templates with scheduling and assignment. It also means a continuously maintained suite of audits managed by our in-house team.

Impact Dashboards

Leadership-ready views connects actions to outcomes making excellence visible and evidences improvement for regulators.

Care Plan Improvement Opportunities (AI-supported, human led)

Move from reactive sampling to proactive assurance with full-population assurance across clarity, person-focus, and alignment.

Audit Creation

Run all of the audits your organisation runs today through Nourish with the ability to create audits from scratch with the ability to add yes/no, numeric and free text answers and to define what answers should trigger actions.

Audit Oversight

One hub to plan, balance, and track audits across services. This allows governance to see where audits are happening or not and also to see which audits are most commonly finding issues.

Action Tracker

Close the loop; no lost tasks or duplicated effort with centralised actions from audits, events, inspections.

Interested in finding out more?

To find out more about how Nourish Confidence can benefit your care service and the people you support, fill in your details to chat to our team.