We caught up with Neela, the head of business development at Vestacare, to find out how they are getting on with digital care planning, and why they decided to choose Nourish.
Vestacare provides high quality, innovative services for people with learning disabilities, autism, and the physical disabilities and healthcare needs that come with it. They offer day services, respite care and residential care.
Since Vestacare offer a range of services to adults with learning disabilities and complex needs, and have 120 staff supporting 90 people, it was extremely important for Vestcare to choose the right system when looking to switch to electronic care planning.
Why did you decide to start looking into recording care digitally?
The directors of Vestacare are always looking to innovate and stay ahead of the times, and we noticed that staff were having to take a lot of time recording notes by hand which can be very laborious work.
After a long shift you don’t always remember what happened 8 hours ago, and we felt that staff were spending less time with the people they support because of the time they were taking doing admin.
What did you look for in an digital care planning system?
We wanted a system that was well designed, clear and easy to use. It was important for us to have real time reporting that we could share and the ability to produce timely management reports.
How was the process of implementing Nourish?
We picked a mixed group of staff, some older, some younger, to do a demo , and then we piloted Nourish in our short breaks service first. This was a brand-new Vestacare service so they went straight into using Nourish from the start, which worked really well.
We also had a great test site, which we were able to tweak and refine to get the platform to exactly the way we wanted it, before rolling it out to our residential home.
How did you find the support from Nourish throughout the journey?
We were incredibly supported from start to finish. No question was a silly question, and they were there 24/7. Responses were always timely and courteous, it’s just been fantastic across the board from sales to support and training. We’re hoping to roll out Nourish to our day centre next.
What benefits have you seen in staff and the quality of care?
The biggest difference, and one we saw almost immediately was that our teams spent far less time looking through files and writing their notes. Which in turn meant they were spending much more face to face time with those they were supporting.
One of the stand-out features for me is the handover function, which has been so helpful when passing over crucial information to other staff members when there’s a shift change. This has allowed for much better consistency and continuity in the care we’re providing.
The care plans were an important feature for you, how did Nourish fit your requirements?
Yes, we wanted completely customisable care plans for each individual because everyone’s needs are so different. When we looked at other systems we didn’t like how the care plans were automatically produced by answering a series of questions, as this made them very generic and almost identical for everyone.
With Nourish, there’s a lot of free text boxes so you can really tailor the plan to the individual’s needs. Everyone’s timeline looks different and has different actions that are relevant to them, so no single care plan or timeline look the same.
Overall the experience has been really positive and we’ve had great support from Nourish every step of the way. We’ve also had really great feedback from parents and social workers who have noticed a difference in the way we care.
To find out more about Vestacare and the services they provide, visit www.vestacare.co.uk.
