Striving to become a digital-first organisation, Community Integrated Care assess every person to explore where technology could help them to live their best possible life. Working in the community, the charity uses digital care plans, innovative sensors and now a virtual care centre to provide support around the clock.
Here, Joanna Scammell, Managing Director for Technology Enabled Care, and Natalie Evans, Virtual Care Centre Manager for Community Integrated Care explain how technology gives people the support and reassurance they need.
What is the Virtual Care Centre?
“Our Care Centre provides 24/7 virtual support,” said Joanna Scammell. “It’s staffed by a trained team of support workers in our head office and provides reassurance that support will always be available as soon as it’s needed. We use technology-enabled care, so we can video call and support people virtually. It complements traditional care staff in the community and widens support in a way that suits each person. Through our Nourish platform, every care worker can access live information about the people they’re supporting, whether virtually through the Care Centre or face-to-face.”
How does it benefit the people we support?
“Someone might have physical care from us, but they might also want a more blended model of care,” explained Joanna Scammell. “For example, we have a woman who received six hours of care a week and was experiencing anxiety about going to sleep. She works, so it’s important that she gets her rest.
“Together with her, we tried three hours a week of physical care and three hours of virtual care. This means every evening she receives a half hour call as she’s going to sleep, and the care worker stays on the line with her until she’s asleep. This has helped her immeasurably by reducing her anxiety and she’s missed less work.”
How do you use the Nourish Platform?
“We’ve got technology-enabled care plans and emergency care plans for everyone we support,” detailed Joanna Scammell. “It’s led to better information sharing, particularly among colleagues during transfers of care or handovers. It makes everything much simpler. It also helps to identify patterns and trends in behaviour. We’re integrating Nourish with sensors and monitors, so we can build a comprehensive picture of someone’s overall life and be more proactive around identifying peoples’ needs.”
How does Nourish support your team at Community Integrated Care?
“One of the biggest pain points for frontline leaders was on-call duties,” said Natalie Evans. “Being on-call for a week at a time has a massive impact on your family life. With technology and Nourish, we’ve been able to centralise that. Now on-call comes into one centre that’s coordinated by managers. This means our local managers out in the regions can now have that quality time at home with their families without the need to be on-call.
“Nourish plays a massive part in that because it acts like a brain. Those shift managers who are in the centre can support people, regardless of whether they’re 200 miles away or three miles down the road. Because that unique service information is all within Nourish. It doesn’t make a difference where we’re based. We’re making huge strides because of Nourish.”
What other ways are you using technology?
We use technology to help us keep people safe while they get out in their community and live their lives. For example, we had a man who hadn’t been able to go on holiday for 15 years. We provided him with a GPS smartwatch, and he went on holiday to a town an hour and a half away.
He was able to use his watch to plan his bus journey and he could call the care team from his watch if he missed the bus or didn’t know where he was. He had the reassurance that we knew where he was, and that he could contact us at any time for support.
