When care providers look for funding they can feel like a broken record. In a sector often overlooked and rarely understood the debate to establish the value, and justify the cost of social care is well worn and, quite frankly, out of style. The NHS’s recently published Long Term Plan is an ambitious vision of community-led support. One that social care can, and indeed must, play a definitive role in. In order to do this social care providers need a dependency tool that can accurately reflect the care requirements and costs of the people they support. Especially in a health and care context where the needs of people drawing on support are growing more complex.
At Nourish Care we are working with our users to develop such a tool, which we call Nourish Transparency. We are building Transparency to accurately assess care needs at a granular, personal level and provide a detailed breakdown of the support each person using a service requires. Giving care providers the ability to tie these costs to their own rates and the information to back up their funding requests.
We spoke to Caroline Alford, Central Operations Director for The Orders of St John Care Trust (OSJCT), about why Nourish Transparency is required, and the benefits it will bring for care providers. We also spoke to Paul Skuse, Product Manager at Nourish and a former Registered Manager of Adults & Children’s services, with over 17 years of direct social care experience, to discuss how Transparency works in action. So care providers can move past the old dependency song and dance, and change the score for their communities.
“I have worked in care for almost 33 years at this point,” explained Caroline. “So I have plenty of firsthand experience of the challenges that we all have on being able to evidence all elements of the care we provide to our residents. Which at times is difficult and can be very time-consuming. As a result, we can find ourselves under-funded, unable to demonstrate the full extent of the care we are delivering and the resources required to sustain it.
“Resident’s needs are changing so much and the proportion of those with higher needs has grown substantially. At OSJCT we see the dependency of the residents moving into our homes is changing rapidly. They are typically arriving with higher dependency needs, such as requiring more medication or having more frailty. Which often means they need more than one carer to support them. We need to be able to demonstrate that to ensure we are being funded accordingly.
“That’s why everyone at OSJCT is so excited about Nourish Transparency! Having been involved in the building of Transparency I truly believe that this is going to be a game changer. It provides the functionality to support us to evidence the care each of our residents needs. As well as the right staffing required to meet those needs. Ultimately giving us the tools to highlight what the true cost of care is.”
Nourish Transparency was created to answer a specific challenge:
How can we design a product that:
“It all starts with a simple assessment,” explained Paul Skuse, Nourish Transparency Product Manager. “The assessor records common activities within clear, easy-to-understand groups, making often difficult conversations about care and support more intuitive. It’s quick to complete, but incredibly powerful when combined with the Nourish platform.
“Once the assessment is complete, staff continue supporting people as usual, recording as they go in Nourish. Nourish Transparency runs in the background, continuously tracking against that baseline to show how care and support activities align with, or diverge from, assessed needs. The activities in the assessment are connected to the daily timeline. Which means managers have a dynamic, objective view of whether a person’s package of care truly meets their needs or requires review.
“Nourish has always been at the forefront of using data in powerful ways, and Nourish Transparency follows that lead. Assessment data flows directly into live views of staffing requirements and a view comparing cost of care to agreed funding. Helping your team prioritise cases for review and make informed choices that put your organisation on sustainable footing.
“At its core, Nourish Transparency is a simple idea: assess people’s needs based on the care and support they actually receive every day. Then use that insight to continuously improve quality, efficiency, and outcomes to make care better for everyone. Fundamentally, showing it’s working throughout the process. Removing the reliance on ‘black box’ scoring or impersonal algorithms.”
“The point of assessment is where it all begins,” said Caroline. “Nourish Transparency gives us the tools to able to understand the whole care needs of the potential resident. So we can be confident in our ability to provide the care they need. Whilst also ensuring our operational sustainability to continuously provide care to all residents within each care setting.
“The platform enables us to more easily keep track of our residents needs as they evolve as well. So instead of doing full reviews several times throughout the year to see if the residents needs are being met, this system will allow us to review changes more easily as we are seeing the resident needs are increasing. It also helps us determine between when these changes are long lasting or when it is a short term change. Such as a recent illness or an infection.
“This continuation of care is supported by the overviews and reports Nourish Transparency builds. So that you can clearly see the average time care takes. This will really help ensure our care plans are developed based on the support needed. With Nourish Transparency we are not just cover personal care or daily living tasks. The system is very person centred, so it capture the resident’s social and emotional needs as well.
“Crucially, this level of insight into the needs of our community also gives us a clear understanding of the staffing levels we need.”
“Like many providers we often find that the care assessments we undertake, or the reassessments we request from local authorities, are rejected based on lack of evidence to show the level of care that is needed,” said Caroline. “The way Nourish Transparency is being developed it captures time taken for tasks to be carried out. This helps us clearly demonstrate the true cost of care to our Local Authority.
“For example, in our services we often struggle to really evidence the time that is taken to give reassurance to residents. Specially those who are often walking around the home with a purpose looking for someone who is no longer in their life. These events can often happen more than five times a day. To more than one resident. It is critical to our residents wellbeing for us to give them the time and assurance needed.
“Evidencing this in care plans can be difficult and time consuming based on the frequency of these events. Nourish Transparency will help us capture these and build a clear story of each residents individualised needs.
“We see that Nourish Transparency will give us the evidence we need to be able to demonstrate the outstanding care we give. Helping us justify a fair price for the care we deliver to the Local Authority.”
“Each year when annual reviews take place or following a reassessment we often get asked by residents, family members etc. for a breakdown of what their fees covers. Nourish Transparency will help with both of these scenario’s as we will have clear timelines on their care needs. As well as the support we provide on a daily basis.”
“A tool like Nourish Transparency means that we can get more help to truly identify individual needs and preferences,” explained Caroline. “So we can build a package specifically for them. This builds on everyone’s desire to treat everyone who uses our service as an individual, and move us away from the reductive ‘dependency scores’ of the past.”
There is a well-known African proverb that frequently comes up in conversations about health and social care. ‘If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together’. Its applicability rings true in a myriad of contexts, echoing a common lesson. Coproduction is key to quality. At Nourish we apply this maxim to every aspect of our development cycle. Drawing upon our users, like IBC Healthcare, and their communities to design software that is efficient, effective and always puts the person being supported first. On our tenth anniversary this focus is expanding beyond our initial application. A direct result of our perception of social care technology being expanded through our relationships with Nourish users. These relationships inform our new products, and shape their development through our Early Adopters Programme.
We sat down with Anna Goscombe, Director of Quality & Therapeutic Services at IBC Healthcare, to discuss our exciting new Incident and Accident management software, Nourish Safety. As well as the vital role her service plays in its development.
“We knew it would be good for both parties. We’ve worked quite closely with you over the past few months as part of the Early Adopters Programme. We felt the time was right to engage with Nourish Safety because we were in a position where our current platform for that type of software solution was not fit for purpose for us. There were no plans for that particular supplier to develop their platform into what we needed. So we reached out to Nourish, as we were already using Better Care, to have an open conversation about what we needed for incident and accident management.
“What was really impressive is that you responded by showing us your roadmap. We committed to working with you because we feel confident with Nourish. You always deliver on what you say you will do.
“At IBC Healthcare we’re about homes, not hospitals. That goes for both our supported living and residential services. We love empowering people to be as independent as they possibly can be. While managing risks effectively. Which requires highly customisable and personalisable functionality to match our approach. We wanted a software that could support that commitment.
“We support some extremely complex people, with an average of three to one ratio staffing at times. For us, understanding the complexity of a person’s needs is not just about the initial transition into their new home with us. But rather asking, ‘how do we create sustainability and longevity for the people utilising our service?’
“In action, because of the high acuity and high complexity of the people we support, we need to make sure that we’re recording a high level of detail. We need to capture every aspect of someone’s experience. Particularly in behaviour incidents which are common for us. In addition, these details need to be on a system that provides a user-friendly platform for our staff teams. And has a functionality within that that allows us to review and manage said incidents. Because often some of those aspects are separate.”
“We feel like we work in partnership with you, as a provider to a provider. That collaborative working is so good, I think the process really works. I don’t think everyone does that, you know? And it’s not just ‘doing it to say you did it’. Nourish facilitated our collaboration really well. So, it’s enabled us, we engage in it in the best way that we possibly can. It’s been really successful and continues to be as the rollout comes. We really feel like we’re in a partnership.”
“First of all, naturally, Nourish would ask us as a provider about our challenges, what gaps we have, what we are looking to fill. We felt that there was a genuine interest in our service and community. An understanding of what those gaps were and a desire to help us address them.
“Additionally, some colleagues and I were invited up to your offices to spend time with your team. Which was a nice opportunity to meet people in person and get to know one another. It’s clear everyone involved wanted to understand how we could build the best solution together. Firstly, for the people we support, but also the best system for staff to use. It never felt like a tick box exercise. It’s way beyond that where everyone involved wants to genuinely create something good that’s going to work for everyone it impacts.
“In my experience that’s such a unique approach. Working alongside a supplier to address the root of the challenges we face and understand them. There were so many questions and dialogue during that day and it was so useful.
“We’ve attended a couple of separate follow up get togethers as part of that programme since. Getting to see the work that’s been done, and how our input is actioned. It shows that we weren’t just there for a discussion. You can clearly see our influence throughout the development. That is a true partnership in action.
“We felt listened to. We’re the people that are delivering it on the ground floor. We’re saying this is what is needed. To be involved like this is also reassuring, we’re not just waiting for nothing. We are 100% reassured that, ‘yeah, let’s stick with Nourish because they’re definitely going to deliver.”
“One of the main benefits is we’ve essentially already been planning the rollout in our organisation. Which means we’ve had time to discuss how it’s going to look and what we need to do to make sure it is effective.
“Normally it can take 3-6 months to embed a new system effectively. Whereas with Nourish’s incident and accident management functionality, we’ve been involved in the development along the way. We’ve tested parts and fed back any little changes we wanted made. Although we didn’t have much feedback recently, the last test was pretty spot on!
“Something that quickly becomes clear working with Nourish is the fact that you know providers are trying to drive that person centred approach. From a product perspective it ties in with us using the care planning on Nourish. Which is already person centred, and it’s got positives for so many reasons. But when you’ve then got the detailed incident management on there as well and event management, it all just flows. The workflow is just so much better because you’re using the same platform. You can go on someone’s timeline and see everything you need. It means that we’ve got less chance of missing things, or you can order it in a different way. Which makes understanding incidents and accidents so much easier.
“We feel we’ve had a pivotal role in helping shape behavioural workflows on the platform. As a provider offering complex care we had a definite requirement for an event form that was going to capture enough detail. It was a 100% must for us. Which gets back to working in a partnership with Nourish. We invested so much in this process so we can get the most out of it. And I know if you asked my colleague, he would firmly say and believe that, ‘Nourish have now got one of the best, if not the best product, on the market.’
“We take pride in being a part of that. At the end of last year we were looking for systems we could implement to solve these problems for us. We just couldn’t find one fit for purpose. A product that allows the detail to be inputted in a user-friendly way and at the same time gives you the opportunity to get the output from it. Take the dashboard for example, that’s going to give us the live data that we need. Data that’s going to be accurate. We weren’t able to get that before. There just wasn’t anything else that really ticked all the boxes for us, now we’ve helped build one!”
“Our primary goal coming into this process was to provide a user-friendly platform for our staff teams. To have a functionality within that which allows us at IBC Healthcare to review and manage incidents and accidents. Because often some of those aspects are separate.
“The best bit is the fact that we can then review and manage that information effectively. The product has the ability to attach an investigation to an incident at the debrief. Which is one of the most important things because at the moment we still use paper for that. So that then becomes paperless and automatically attached to an incident. That’s one of the biggest things for us.
“What Nourish has achieved is a genuinely user-friendly platform. It doesn’t ask for unnecessary text. You can use placeholders for managers so you can focus on what you need to in the moment. It’s everything you need in one place, and it’s easy to action, that’s what we need. It’s super user friendly and there are benefits felt at every level of the organisation.”
“For our Support Workers it’s going to be a lot easier for them to understand what is expected of them when filling an incident in. Which reduces the amount of training that we need, especially when it’s repeated training. Previously, we regularly conducted repeat training to try and coach people through how to effectively write an incident. The new functionality is going to really improve that. Which directly impacts the quality of our responses to incidents and the support we provide going forward.”
“With good incident management you can also provide the right staff support. Debrief for us is something that we wanted to improve on. Because when you’re working with such complex high acuity people naturally it’s emotionally demanding for staff. Managing incidents effectively is important to avoid staff burnout. Which then positively impacts the care and support they deliver. Nourish allows us to ensure that debriefs are completed in a timely fashion. They’re attached to the incident and that we can go and find them easily. Rather than searching through folders and asking everyone if they’ve seen a form, it just gets done. I think that feature in particular, having a debrief attached to the incident, is going to make a huge difference.
“I mentioned it briefly previously, the ability to use placeholders. When you record an incident in the moment your team member might not have time to put all the detail in. With Nourish you can use a what is effectively a placeholder and continue filling in the important details later. Crucially, you still have the notification so you can see that something has happened and respond to it. That feature is quite nifty for our managers especially.”
“In short? This system means they could potentially get any attention or response that they need. And get it quickly. Especially if it’s an emergency response or we need to send somebody out within the organisation. If someone’s not got time to write all the detail, they could still flag the incident. We’ll give them a call to make sure everything’s OK, which in turn benefits the person we support.
“We’ve got processes in place internally whereby we review and analyse incidents. I think to be able to do that quicker is beneficial and with Nourish we will be able to do it quicker. In part thanks to that placeholder functionality as well.
“Sometimes in the past we weren’t being notified of incidents until two or three days down the line because they weren’t being completed. Obviously, that’s not going to happen anymore.”
“It’s a game changer. The reporting functionality on our current platform isn’t brilliant. Additionally, for a whole host of reasons, the incident detail wasn’t good enough. Or sometimes it was delayed because information was siloed on different platforms. This all meant you couldn’t rely completely on the accuracy of the data. Or you couldn’t respond quick enough. So again, for all those reasons Nourish improves the quality of service that we’re providing to the person we support because we’ve got a better handle and a better management of incidents. We can better map the trends.
“What I mean when I say map trends, is that we can really understand the full picture. For example, ‘what might be the triggers here for this person?’ or ‘is it specifically happening in the home, is it specifically in the community where most incidents are occurring?’
“With the dashboard and Nourish you’re going to have that information quite quickly. For example, you can see how many restrictive physical interventions there have been. You can check important factors like if any restraints were used. We can then review previous data and see there were three restraints this month. But there was none for the last two months. Clearly something’s happened.
“It is crucial we can notice those things and be able to record triggers like that when providing LD and mental health services. It’s important to do it, but also important to do it in a in a timely manner. Local authorities, placing authorities, commissioners, they all expect it. They expect us to analyse that sort of data, but also to foresee any potential risk or escalation in incidents. More than that, we expect it of ourselves.
“Understanding incidents, whether they are basic or complicated, can potentially prevent a hospital readmission, or discharge to another service or staff burnout.
“Ultimately, it’s about providing personalised, centralised support for people so they can live the lives they want. It starts with safety, and that’s why we’re so excited to be building this product with Nourish.”
Find out more about Nourish Safety and how it can transform your approach to Incidents & Accidents.
Evidence the true cost of care
Compare assessed need with the reality of care delivery to align staffing, funding and true care costs using Nourish Transparency.
By the time organisations understand how care has changed, the financial and operational consequences have already begun.
Nourish Transparency changes that.
Care today is being planned, funded and governed through systems that assume stability in a world where care is anything but stable. Needs change continuously, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually. Risk accumulates quietly. Yet the mechanisms used to translate need into staffing, funding and assurance remain largely static. As a result, social care is being run on delayed visibility and the cost of this is no longer sustainable.
Nourish Transparency continuously compares assessed need with the reality of care delivery.
Because assessment and delivery are built on the same care model, Nourish Transparency can identify where care demand has changed, what those changes mean operationally, and how they affect staffing, funding and governance.
On the Nourish platform, needs assessment and care delivery are connected through the same care and support records. We call these building blocks interactions, the individual notes, tasks and observations logged as care happens. The activities used to describe a person’s needs are also used to plan and record the care provided, creating a clear line of sight from assessed need to delivered care. This enables organisations to continuously review whether support remains aligned with reality as circumstances change.
Nourish Transparency makes change visible without imposing surveillance or unsustainable administrative burden. Through approaches such as dynamic sampling, it surfaces trend, drift and escalation early enough to support timely, proportionate action.
Dynamic Sampling continuously monitors care delivery to identify where meaningful change is occurring. Rather than repeatedly reassessing every person, it intelligently focuses attention where care demand is evolving, providing earlier insight while minimising administrative burden.
Transparency does not measure individual performance or enforce task-by-task scrutiny. It focuses on aggregate patterns of care demand, the result is a system that supports fairness rather than policing.
Transparency changes the quality of insight available. Instead of relying on anecdote or intuition to explain why services feel stretched, leaders can point to evidence of how care demand has shifted – in timing, intensity or complexity – and what that implies for staffing and routines.
Transparency provides something that has historically been elusive: an evidence narrative that links need to delivery and delivery to cost.
*Modelled 500-PWS reference service
Annual cost of poor visibility, modelled for a 500-PWS service
Return on the £39,000 annual cost of Transparency.
Payback, pays for itself inside a single quarter
Funding uplift success rate improvement (~12.5% → ~25%)
Nourish Transparency is here to help enhance service sustainability and person-centred care.
An intuitive way to assess weekly care and support needs based on real-world interactions.
See a weekly, service-wide view of care needs, giving you the tools to plan ahead.
Quickly identify funding gaps by comparing assessed costs with agreed fees in a dedicated dashboard.
Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
Protect your data with our Mobile Device Management solution.
Keeping the data of the people you support safe and secure is a critical consideration for every care provider. That’s where Nourish Protect comes in.
Our mobile device management solution empowers your team to efficiently record and access information at the point of care, whilst ensuring sensitive data remains secure and protected.
Nourish Protect is here to give you and your service peace of mind while you focus on the people you support.
*device must be powered on and connected to the internet.
Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
Nourish Better Care is a flexible care management system that helps care providers record, coordinate and manage care in one easy-to-use platform.
From improving communication across teams to simplifying compliance and reporting, Nourish Better Care provides everything organisations need from a modern digital care solution.
Our system helps you plan, record and coordinate care quickly and easily for everyone you support. From the people you support to care teams, managers and owners, Better Care simplifies and centralises communication to improve the lives of everyone involved in care.
Designed around the needs of care teams, the Nourish Better Care app gives staff instant access to care plans, assessments and daily records. The intuitive care management software helps carers spend less time on administration and more time supporting the people in their care.
At Nourish, we’re here to help you provide great care that changes the lives of the people you support. And with our advanced care management system, you have the technology in place to achieve just that: person-centred care.
Nourish Better Care works with a number of services across a variety of care types. We know that not all care looks the same, which is why we collaborate with you to create a unique care management system that works for you.
Nourish works in close collaboration with you to create a digital platform that suits the unique needs of each care service.
Care plans give care workers information on the everyday needs and preferences of the people they support. This helps them to understand why they are delivering care in a certain way, creating a deeper understanding and enhancing the quality of care being delivered.
Assessments help you keep track of every aspect of someone’s care, meaning you always have the most up to date and accurate information. From preventing ulcers to screening for malnutrition, our digital assessments can be easily completed to support your vital work.
Nourish Better Care includes a handover screen, where important information is displayed at the touch of a button. This saves time and makes sure details aren’t missed when staff change between shifts. The whole care team will be able to see the latest handover notes for the people they support.
Our integration with GP Connect gives authorised care professionals access to up-to-date GP records and medical notes, supporting safer, more informed decision-making at the point of care.
We work with trusted partners to connect different technology and tools, so they all work together to empower you in providing seamless end-to-end care to the people you support.
As part of our partnership programme, we work with best-in-class providers across the sector, ensuring that our offering is scalable, secure, and aligned with the future of health and social care.
Nourish Better Care is designed to take the pressure off care teams by pulling everything they need into one straightforward system.
Care plans, updates and reporting all sit together, so staff aren’t jumping between paperwork or different tools. With digital care planning, it’s easy to keep information up to date, and real-time reporting gives managers a clear view of what’s happening across their services without having to chase updates.
The Nourish Better Care app helps carers do more at the point of care, whether that’s recording notes, checking plans or completing assessments, even when they’re offline – helping to focus more on delivering care, and less on admin and paperwork.
It also supports better joined-up working through GP Connect integration and helps organisations stay on top of compliance with clear, consistent records that are ready for inspection when needed.
Nourish Care makes the jobs of frontline care workers and managers simpler and easier. Want to improve your care management? Speak to our team today.
The Nourish Better Care app allows care professionals to access care plans, complete assessments, record care delivery and update notes in real time. By reducing paperwork and enabling mobile access to key information, care teams can spend more time delivering quality care and less time on administration.
Yes. Care staff can securely update care records, complete forms, record observations and document care interactions directly through the app. Information is synchronised across the platform, helping ensure records remain accurate and up to date.
Yes. The platform enables authorised users across care settings to access relevant information, helping improve communication between carers, managers and other stakeholders while ensuring everyone is working from the latest records.
Digital care planning reduces reliance on paper-based processes and makes care information easier to access, update and review. This can improve record accuracy, support person-centred care and provide managers with greater oversight of care delivery.
Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
Transform your approach to Incident Management in care.
At Nourish, we believe every life should be lived to its full potential. And every person supported should feel safe, empowered and engaged with the support they’re receiving.
However, when things don’t go quite to plan, the way we respond, learn and make improvements has a significant impact on the person’s ongoing wellbeing and safety.
With Nourish Safety we’ve harnessed our care management expertise to provide a fully integrated and holistic experience where you can manage incidents, ensure compliance, and focus on what matters most – empowering the people you support to live life to its full potential.
Log the initial details of an event or near miss in less than 30 seconds, log events confidentially and benefit from care specific workflows such as wounds, falls and behaviours.
Including configurable notifications, a dedicated event view and a live event tracker.
Including dashboards and prompts to support trend identification
Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
We Change Lives are amongst the most eponymous care providers in the UK. A charity based in Cheshire, England, they support people with dementia, elderly people, people with learning disabilities, mental health issues and brain injuries, to live their lives to the fullest. They have been using Nourish Care for over two and a half years. The success of their people focused service has seen them grow considerably during this time. Including adding three new services at the end of last year. We sat down with their Head of Care Sarah Gardner and their Quality and Safeguarding Manager Sarah Battersby. To discuss how Nourish has supported them to change so many lives through their variety of services.
“Initially, we were trying to get away from paper and the complications of storing our data in office filing cabinets,” said Sarah Gardner. “That was the driving force, trying to come into the 21st century. As time has passed, our focus has changed, particularly for Sarah and myself. Now we are focused more on controlling quality, recording information and keeping that data in a single, central place.
“It means that when Sarah, in her role as Quality and Safeguarding Manager, conducts site visits they are centred on feedback and interactions with people. She has so much more time to interact with people directly. Because she can access all the relevant assessments from her home office. The freedom to give that much attention to people and really be present with them when visiting our services is incredibly important to us.
“As for me in my oversight role. I find having the insights and the ability to reference all the information we have available quickly is incredible. At the click of a button, I can see what people are telling me. What they have recorded, what is the wider context and so on. Having that data readily and easily accessible is really, really effective.
“The crucial thing is the working relationship. We’ve used electronic systems in other areas of the organisation and the support function has not been the same. With Nourish it has felt more like a relationship. Where we’re working together to produce a really good system that can benefit the wider social care system. Whereas that’s not been our experience with some of the other introductions of software. With Nourish, it’s been actually ‘let’s work together to find something that really, really works.’”
“We did that in a very different way to the initial rollout,” explained Sarah Gardner. “In both instances we were digitising a paper-based organisation. However, because we had more experience the second time around we were able to move much quicker. We now how we want to adapt the Nourish system to best wrap around our services. All our learnings from the first time around helped us shape the system to our needs.”
“The staff were very eager to get Nourish up and running in the new services,” added Sarah Battersby. “Honestly, they got a bit fed up with rolling it out slowly and just wanted to go with the one digital system. The love Nourish that much.”
“Absolutely,” continued Sarah Battersby. “We had the initial training with everyone, the managers, deputy managers and Nourish. We started off with weekly meetings. Then they went to monthly and that continued for a long time as we sorted everything out. Once we finished building out the system to match our new services, we were a lot quicker. Our information was much more up to date and accurate. Like Sarah said earlier, we really wanted to get away from paper and centralise all our information. Nobody wants to be tracking back through cabinets of paper records.”
“We had a deputy manager in one of our residential services who does not like change. She does not like technology,” said Sarah Gardner. “She is now one of our champions. So, she goes out to our new services and supports them to engage in the system and helps them develop bespoke support plans. It’s brilliant because she can go out with that point of view of ‘I didn’t want this I didn’t want to do it,’ and now she’s a real advocate for it. That voice from that sort of personality is much stronger than ours, and it’s because of how easy Nourish is to use and how clear the benefits and positive outcomes are.”
“The most obvious outcome is the quality of information we are recording is so much better now, because we’re recording it in real time,” detailed Sarah Gardner. “We have a lot of supported living properties, so when one of our carers goes out, they might be out all day. Thanks to Nourish, they can easily use their phone to take notes throughout the day. You can take photos and record notes as it’s happening. So it’s not just everything’s in one place, accessible and easy to share. The information we’re recording is better because it’s being recorded at the time it’s happening.”
“Not just the accuracy, we get more detailed information now as well,” said Sarah Battersby. “People used to write their notes at the end of their shift. So, they’re at the end of a 12-hour shift and they get the care file out, they’d write up the notes, and you’d see ‘oh, yeah, had a good day, everything’s fine’. There’s no real data or information as to what the person’s been doing or involved in that day. Whereas now, they’re imputing that data straight after every event, straight after a meal, straight after their personal care. This means there’s much more data, and it’s much more detailed.”
“Writing can be difficult for some of our colleagues,” added Sarah Gardner. “It wasn’t something that came naturally to them. They struggled with the spelling and putting the words together but they’re brilliant at supporting people in the right way. Nourish takes that stress away, it’s such an enabler for our staff. Nourish even has a translate function which is incredible for our team members whose first language isn’t English.”
“It’s an opportunity for staff to sit with that person and look back at what they’ve done in the day as well,” continued Sarah Battersby.” So if they’re awake in the night, and they’re upset and distressed, they can look back at what they’ve done and have a chat about it. Some people we support might forget those things, but then they see a photo and it’ll take them back and they can have that important conversation.”
“Nourish is fantastic for involving everyone in the development of care,” said Sarah Battersby. “The microphone system is brilliant. People can use it to easily share their feedback on their care experience just by talking into it. We can also take pictures of their activities and link them to the things that they’ve done and their goals in life. We can then share this information with their families, so they get to see what activities the person is doing, what they’ve had to eat today, and how they are. They have easy access to the information they want without having to constantly ring up and ask someone who may or may not be directly involved in their loved one’s care.”
“For us, definitely,” said Sarah Battersby. “There’s a lot of information there that we can now check and oversee. It would take me hours to go through somebody’s paperwork in the service to figure out all the accidents and incidents that have happened over the previous month. Whereas now I can just pull up a chart, and it’s all there for me. And it gives me additional data that it didn’t have like, ‘What time do the most accidents happen?’ ‘Whereabouts in the buildings did the most accidents happen?’ There’s so much other data there to provide me with a more complete picture of the care that’s pulled through.”
“It helps a lot of questioning, doesn’t it?” added Sarah Gardner. “When significant accidents and incidents happen, we have to report that to the CQC. So Sarah and myself will look at the submission before it’s sent from a service manager. I’m not involved in the delivery directly, but I have that oversight responsibility, so it’s an invaluable insight for me. I think, ‘Oh, I’m sure I’ve read this before, this seems like a pattern to something that’s happened before.’ Straightaway I can go into Insights and look at the accidents and data and see if there’s a trend that the manager is not picking up on. Whereas before I was going, ‘do you think there’s a trend?’ and it’s very reliant on what the managers are telling me in a conversation. Now I can follow up on my instincts and I can see that trend for myself. From a senior management perspective, Nourish has significantly improved our questioning ability.”
“All of the information is on a timeline,” explained Sarah Battersby. “Which is fantastic for safeguarding and management. If there’s anything that’s raised that you find concerning it’s so easy to review. Say for example, you’re worried about malnutrition, you can see everything that happened and when it happened. That’s what they drank, that’s when they drank it, this is how they felt afterwards. It’ll show me all that information. I can have it in a chart, or I can have it as a list showing what they’ve consumed. It surfaces really crucial information to us like whether there’s a deterioration quite quickly, and we can act on that.”
“It’s brilliant for promoting safety in support,” said Sarah Gardner, “because our carers have all the information they need on their phones. Say you’re a new person that’s come in, you’ve got that immediate, shorter profile that lets you know all the immediate risks and how to support somebody straight away. It’s got all the relevant interactions you need, and everything is up to date. You know exactly when somebody needs their medication, or a catheter changed, whatever it is. In terms of keeping people safe and supporting them in a safe way, it’s brilliant. We previously never had something that you could layer so effectively either. Where it’s got an interaction, and we can embed another action or follow-up behind it, and it all flows together. I’m looking at this from an assurance point of view and I can be confident that people know what they’re doing, and that it’s really accessible and all the information is up to date. It’s brilliant.”
“Nourish makes such a difference with agency staff too,” added Sarah Battersby. “You’re never going to have an agency staff member come in and read a whole file filled with pharmacy plans and care plan information, it just isn’t going to happen. So now they can just access the part of the plan that they need at the time, and we can be confident they have everything they need to provide care to our standards.”
“It makes a big difference on the commercial side of things as well,” said Sarah Gardner “We have to prove what we’re doing in order to get funding, particularly in supported living where funding can be based on one-to-one engagement and activities. We need to evidence the fact that we’re delivering against these requirements. There’s nothing better than a picture to achieve that. You can write what you want, but when somebody’s looking at the pictures it’s so much easier to understand the impact of our support.”
“Lots of different things really,” said Sarah Battersby. “We’ve mentioned some of them already, like the microphone, which never occurred to us at all. The fact that you can set alerts and warnings. That is that was a really useful part of the system that we’ve applied in lots of different ways. The insights we’re getting from the information is brilliant. We were expecting some of that, but we’ve actually got a lot more than we anticipated!”
“We do have quite an ambitious growth strategy,” said Sarah Gardner. “We’re expecting in the next sort of five years that we will be a couple of times bigger than we are. Something we love about our partnership with Nourish is it feels like we’re constantly evolving with you at the same time. Nourish has been such a success story for us so far and we are eager to continue to develop our use of technology to benefit our teams and the people who utilise their support.”
The solution which gives you the flexibility to view and analyse your care data in a way that works best for you.
Nourish Analytics is designed to meet the unique needs of organisations that require advanced reporting capabilities.
It works by taking data from your Nourish platform, loading it onto a secure Analytics database and transforming into an actionable structure for your in-house data specialist to extract and use to build bespoke reports.
You can choose to combine this data with other sources and create comprehensive reports where you gain powerful operational insights. With this insight you can understand the intricacies of your organisation’s care provision, ensuring you’re able to provide the best quality of care to the people you support.
Make more informed, data-driven decisions with Nourish Analytics.
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Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
Empowering you to make better and safer decisions with our data dashboards.
Our dashboards give you and your team the clarity you need to connect the dots across multiple contexts and easily evidence the care you’re providing. By identifying trends and patterns across your service you can prioritise action which improves the lives of those you support.
All of our dashboards give you clear, actionable data to make better care decisions and empower you to maintain a comprehensive audit trail to support regulatory inspections and demonstrate high-quality care delivery.
Stay on top of the metrics that matter most and understand change over time.
Whether you need to see your data across a group, region or individual service you can easily access the information you need.
Understand impact for your wider organisation, specific locations and individuals supported at the click of a button.
By being able to see the big picture and understand the details you can access a deeper level of insight to improve the efficiency of your operation and improve the outcomes for those you support.
Clear visual representations of data to help you evidence improvements and progress without the need for extensive audits.
Select which data visualisations works for you and view your data through different lenses to access the insights you need.
Our dashboard visualisations are designed to be scalable so your insights remain just as clear as your operation changes and grows.
Bring together and easily track KPIs across your organisation
Ensure the timely assessment, treatment and monitoring of wounds
Quickly identify individuals at risk, reduce hospitalisations and ensure proactive care
Gain a clear oversight of system warnings so concerns can be addresses and processes optimised
Simplify the monitoring of care plan reviews, track progress and identify trends to ensure timely, high quality updates
Gain detailed insights into care interactions, ensuring timely interventions and proactive health management
Centralise key information about the people you support for safer and more effective care
Gain insights into capacity, demographics and facility needs to support effective planning and decision making
Surface key trends and risk factors, identify wounds earlier, minimise recurrence, and prioritise individuals who may require further intervention
Nourish offers a wide range of products to help care providers overcome challenges commonly faced in the sector. See what’s right for your service.
