It is important to remember your roots when you look to the future. With so much planned for the next few months and years here at Nourish Care, we know it’s important to appreciate where it all began. Richmondwood were one of the first services to ever use Nourish. Their deeply personal, community centred care home took on our system back in 2015. Over the past decade we have both gone from strength to strength, growing alongside each other and influencing our respective development throughout that experience.
Throughout this development we have always shared an unwavering commitment to the people who utilise support. Keeping them at the forefront of everything we do. So that for each innovation we develop, from centralisation to communication, is focused on delivering better outcomes for the person with support needs.
We spoke to Richmondwood’s manager, George Smee, about her experience using Nourish Better Care and how it helps her team support their community.
What are the main differences between managing Richmondwood before you had Nourish and afterwards?
“There’s so many different improvements, it’s a lot. I covered a few of them in the video. The biggest aspect really is the centralisation and everything that comes from that in terms of continuity of care.
“I’m on call 24/7 so access to information plays a major part of the manager’s role. Previously I’ve had to stop what I’m doing and come to the home, regardless of what else is going on. I could have my daughter at a party and I have to make my excuses and leave. ‘Sorry, gotta go to work.’ But with Nourish you can sort out a lot of what needs to be done, in real time, with your phone.
“I still need to come into the building at times of course. But nine times out of 10, you can see what’s going on from wherever you are. That’s massive.
“It’s the same for carers, Nourish just makes staying informed so much easier. It promotes continuity of care and understanding without the pain of plunging through filling cabinets or trying to play catch up after a few days off in a row. You’ve got this device that you can see everything that’s happened in the time you’ve been off. That’s fantastic.”
How have you found working with the Nourish team?
“It’s good. Nourish are very communicative. I like the live chat facility, it’s really handy for getting quick answers. You are also great at sharing when new developments are coming that could benefit our service and the people we support. Pilli (Deputy Manager Sarah Pillinger) and I have attended a couple of your webinar sessions.
“The level of communication really helps us focus on the right features for us too. Not all the webinars are relevant to us. But, for example, when you released the new body mapping functionality, that is integral to our day. The webinar and how to guides were incredibly useful. It helps us to stay up to date and engaged with your developments, so we can utilise the functionality to deliver better outcomes for our residents.
“I was actually gone from Richmondwood when we brought in Nourish. So when I returned a few years ago I had some catching up to do to learn the system. My Customer Success Manager at Nourish was really helpful throughout this process. I don’t need to contact Nourish as much now, but if there’s ever something we’re stuck on, or there’s some new functionality we want to introduce to our service we are always well supported.”
Coproduction is a big focus for us here at Nourish, do you feel well supported to suggest new features and help us introduce them to our system?
Oh absolutely. When we’re working with Nourish we really feel like partners. We don’t mind being Lab Rats because we want the functionality to be right! It’s so important to us that we are able to feedback to Nourish about the system. It involves us in the development and helps ensure we are always working towards the same goal, to keep the people using support at the forefront of everything we’re doing.
Can you share some of the positive outcomes you’ve delivered with Nourish for the people utilising your service?
“Absolutely, there’s so many. The way we’re able to utilise our MUST scores effectively through Nourish is incredible. We’ve had people that have been very underweight and we’ve been able to track patterns better and get their weight totals up.
“It starts with the centralised information, and the ease of communication across our service. We can ascertain the best course of action, such as fortified diets and track their impact through Nourish Better Care. Everyone is able to look at the weight in real time and see the progress they’re making.
“We can then combine this with other data points, like the food charts. We can scroll through the charts and see what foods have worked and what hasn’t. Which then helps us track patterns of personal care to uncover vital pieces of information such as, ‘how often has someone been refusing things like that?’
Can you then use these trends to help you plot out and plan for the future?
“Oh absolutely! We do something called ‘resident of the day’, and we can feed so much of this information into that process.
“Once a month we review all the care plans of each resident. We do this for the 1st 22 days of each month so we can cover all everyone using our service. All the information on Nourish feeds into these reviews and the respective care plans. It is very useful. This also makes sharing the relevant information, things like ABC charts, with other people in the person’s wider care circle so much easier.
“I’ll give you an example. I was sat with someone from the community mental health team recently and it was so easy to share the information they needed with them. This is something I love about Nourish because I use it so much. When I am with a social worker or an outside professional, and they ask, ‘Can I see X’s ABC charts for the last three months?’ I can just go click, click, click, ‘there you go’ and e-mail it to them. The ease of centralisation and communication of information in Nourish is incredible, and clearly benefits the people using our service.”
That kind of specificity for your people with support must require a lot of personalisation of your system?
“Nourish gives us the tools to personalise the system to best support our community. when we do a ‘resident of the day’ review we review everything we have on the resident. All the care plans, we do their observations, we do their room checks, we do their weight. Any changes that we’ve made to that care plan, we outline it all and then that goes in a Nourish message and that goes immediately to every staff member.
“This means everyone stays informed and up to date. Even if they haven’t got time to sit down and read a care plan, which is a reality of care when you’re busy working. What they have got time to do is sit and read a message about the updated care plan. So they stay informed, and I haven’t got to run around the building finding everyone!
“That’s brilliant for all of us. We use the message system a lot because it simplifies communication, it gets the necessary information immediately out there to the people who need it.”
“My deputy Pilli is fantastic at setting up specific notifications as well. Nourish Better Care lets us create personalised notifications for residents, which is incredible for promoting person centred care. It reminds them that they’ve got to do something, because it’s sat on their timeline. This clarifies communication and saves them time as well.
“So for the people that are a bit nervous or a bit ‘oh, I don’t understand technology’ we’re able to use Nourish in a way that makes it as user friendly as possible. Which, on top of everything else, saves everyone time!”
Speaking of the carers, how do they find using Nourish?
“Our carers love Nourish. We have a mixed age range of carers. Some of our carers are quite young. They’re working with us while going through university and they’re very technical naturally, so they take to it straight away as you’d expect.
“We also have some carers around my age, in our 40’s. So, we sort of know our way around the computer. We don’t know anything too fancy but we can handle the basics, like sending emails if you know what I mean? We find Nourish very easy to use.
“We’ve also got some carers that have worked here for years that are now hitting retirement age, and they always say ‘Nourish is quite user friendly’. It’s easy to navigate and once you’ve shown them how to use the system, they use it effectively”
How easy is it to report on the information your teams record in Nourish Better Care?
“It’s fantastic, I reckon I use the reporting functionality more than anyone else at Richmondwood. Because all our information is in one place, I can run a report and see everything I need. I can triage everything, do the accident analysis at the end of the month and save it all into one folder.
“I hate paper, so I love that Nourish Better Care helps me keep all this information in an electronic folder. I save all the accidents and incidents for the month and it’s all together in one place for me to report on. I also save my end of the month analysis in the same folder. It’s just so simple to do and it’s all there.
“So, if I need to share evidence or reports with anyone, like CQC social workers, the community mental health team, paramedics, whoever. I can just e-mail it straight across. That centralisation and storage is invaluable to us as an independent home.”
It sounds like after a decade with Nourish everything is going great?
“Definitely, we’ve been with Nourish from the start and there’s a reason we’re still working with you. As I said, when I came back to Richmondwood a few years ago it was easy to pick up the system and use it. I’m lucky enough that I work with the people that started with Nourish back in 2015. The Glazers, who own the home, and Pilli my deputy who has been here for 13 years.
“They were all here when Nourish was first introduced and they’ve always been very complimentary of the platform. I know that it’s been positive across the board from when it started.”
How do you feel about the future?
“We feel great, as I mentioned earlier, working with Nourish really does feel like a partnership. We feel like when we say something it is taken on board, and that we are part of building something together. Something that helps improve the lives of our communities and keeps the people we care for at the centre of everything we do.
“It’s been a fantastic ten years with Nourish, and we can’t wait to see what the next decade has in store for us!”
