Case Study: Care Wise

Care Wise are an established home care provider, serving their community in Lancing for over a decade. Coproduction lies at the heart of their care philosophy, as they bring together the people using their support, their family, their teams and other services to provide care that promotes independence and invigorates participants to live the lives they want, their way. Care Wise joined Nourish Better Care at Home just over a year ago, aiming to build upon their existing functionality in Nourish Empower to centralise both their administrative and care data. With the ambition to more specifically understand their community, and more effectively support their needs. We sat down with Manager Amedome Perry to find out how it went.

“I was learning hands on from the start, so my Customer Success Manager Katie was a huge help. I felt like I could reach out at any time. She would take me through anything I was curious about and help me understand how to best apply the functionality to our person led service. The support team are also a great resource, when we contact them for guidance we get quick responses. So, anytime we have challenges, we simply contact them for any help we need. Thanks to this comprehensive support I became comfortable with the new functionality.

“The Care Wise team found the change quite straightforward. Once we took them through the system and showed them how they can use the system they were really impressed with the functionality. For both themselves, and the people they support.”

“A lot of ways. I love the system because, comparing Better Care at Home to Empower, there is a clearer throughline of care. With Better Care at Home we can use the assessments from the library to build care plans. It makes it so much more fluid and effective to provide care. It also makes it easier to evidence our approach to care.

“During our last council inspection, they were impressed because they could easily see all of the risk assessments we conducted for every part of our care plan environment.

“The range of assessments is fantastic. They are so easy to specify to the people you care for. Which is essential for us as we work with people to promote their independence. The available assessments give you a great starting point. From there we can add and remove any of the sections in the assessment that aren’t relevant. This allows our care to be more person-led as we adapt our assessments to their unique needs, while our administration can be more centralised to adapt to the volume of data we gather to inform our care.”

“It makes it easy to capture, review and act upon information. Care is shaped by the information we capture during appointments. It is critical to improving outcomes and driving independence. It is really helpful now we’re able to capture this vital information in a plain and straightforward way. We have care plans that have the reassessment embedded in them. Which means all the information and processes we need to provide the care we want to is easy to access and apply.  

“This is especially evident when it comes time to use the emergency admissions pack. This toolkit includes all of the necessary information such as their vitals and allergies, which is invaluable when you need to react quickly. 

“We also keep track of all communication that has gone on with our clients and any incidents, like a fall. Effectively we record everything we can in Better Care at Home. This enables us to paint a full picture of someone’s care experience with us. 

“Nourish also helps us centralise our administrative data. For example, the recently released holiday system is fantastic. Our carers can book their holidays directly through the carer app. Then we can just review the requests on our side and easily approve them. So that has also been really helpful for them. This was convenient for both our carers and our office team. It is the exact kind of centralisation we were looking for. 

“Initially tracking holidays was a bit of a pain. Now it is easier for us to track the holidays and know what has been taken, what is outstanding and all the varying factors. And then share that information with our carers. Which makes it a better system for us to manage our team with. 

“Overall, the centralisation and communication capabilities of Better Care at Home are why we are able to manage both sides of our service so effectively. The people we take care of and the people that we employ to take care of them. It’s all interlinked, in an easy and straightforward way and it’s incredibly helpful.”

Simply put, having all this information at my fingertips is brilliant. Your call monitoring functionality is a fantastic management tool. We receive prompts to let us know when carers are running late. So, you don’t have to be monitoring the live feed to see where the carer is. If they’re not logged in, say within 10 minutes of an appointment start time, you are informed and you can follow up with the carer to find out what’s going on. This ensures that no call is missed. Which is both a useful feature and a weight off my mind. Instead of me being on the PC monitoring a live feed I can focus on other things, knowing that if anyone hasn’t logged in for 10 minutes I will get an alert, which is fantastic! 

“We conduct a general care plan review every six months. This is alongside any more acute changes we need to make based on appointment notes and other reported incidents that need more immediate addressing.  

“The general care plan review involves the carer going to the client and having a conversation. Several of our clients include their family members and loved ones in this conversation, which helps reinforce our person led approach. The carer asks questions that help us understand the effectiveness and impact of our care. ‘Do you feel your needs are properly cared for?’ ‘Do you want to change anything?’ ‘Do you want anything added?’. Then based on the conversation we have, we just come on to Better Care at Home and update the care plan. So if the carers record a need to change, these changes happen immediately. 

“When that is updated, we share an updated copy of the care plan with the client. To also go through and make sure the things they hold valuable are reflected. Whatever needs that they require, they can see the information we pulled from the system, what we are going to provide and why. Then, if they are satisfied, they give us go ahead to use their care plan for their care. 

“Thanks to Better Care at Home centralising our information and supporting our communication, our managers have the right information to justify care plan changes as required, and our clients feel informed and involved in their care. Ensuring that we are always supporting the needs of our clients as effectively as possible.  

“The family portal might be my favourite thing about Better Care at Home, it’s so helpful for our approach to care. It allows family members to see the care we are providing. So they have the assurance that comes from involvement and understanding how we’re supporting their loved one at Care Wise. We routinely share information through the portal to help highlight the impact of our care, which the families love.  

“As I said earlier, the family frequently take part in the six-month reviews. With the family portal they are also able to stay abreast of their loved one’s care, which creates a communicative circle of care around the client, their family, and us. This circle includes their multidisciplinary team and other relevant parties as well. All these elements coming together is crucial for promoting independence.”

“It’s how it brings everything together. Better Care at Home helps us manage our client’s needs, knowing what they need, and all the changes that come with their care evolving over time.  

“Without Better Care at Home, it’s difficult to know when an assessment was done, know what has changed and why. So being able to see the changes over time, knowing what has gone on and being able to clearly communicate all of these things with the people that matter, it helps us to support the people who rely on us to our best ability. Without Better Care at Home we would be relying much more on guesswork and guessing doesn’t make the care person centred, coproduction does. Better Care at Home gives us the tools to treat people independently, encompassing their family, their ambitions, their changes and their needs, so they can live independently.”