Case Study: South Coast Homecare

South Coast Homecare want to change the future of care. Their focus is on delivering connected, safe care that reaches across their community. As part of this ambitious undertaking South Coast digitised their processes with Nourish Empower five years ago. Utilising the system to better organise their service and centralise their data. South Coast continue to champion innovation, such as their ‘contingency care plans’. Which offer people an onramp to care services through initial, light touch support that helps normalise using care services as a proactive measure. Establishing relationships with people well before they need to draw upon more regular support.

This forward-thinking approach led South Coast to explore further digitisation options. As part of their development plan they upgraded from Empower to Nourish Better Care at Home in Spring 2025. We met with their Head of Care, Rebecca Palmer, to chat about the roll out, their focus on building connections and the value of clear communication. 

“At South Coast we want to promote independence. That’s why preventative care is better than reactive care. Sometimes we take on a new person and we have to crisis manage. When you go in to check up on them you see how much of their condition could have been prevented. They’re undernourished and that causes other issues. They haven’t been taking their medication, which has caused high blood pressure. They’re not drinking enough which led to a urine infection. With the right information and better communication all those things can be prevented. 

“It’s a massive part of what we use Nourish Better Care at Home for. We need care plans that make sure when anything changes with a person, the care plan is updated quickly. So we need a reactive, easy to update system. 

“Previously we were using these templates on the computer and if you moved something the document could reformat itself randomly. We needed to go onto a proper electronic system. One where we could access information, review it, update it as necessary and be confident everyone who needs to see it can. If someone goes from a Zimmer frame to a hoist that’s a major change. We need to document it effectively to keep them safe, to get the information to the carers and be compliant with the CQC. 

“Nourish helps us do this in a quick and efficient way. Time is something no one has, yet compliance is something everyone needs. Better Care at Home helps us to be responsive and preventative, but in a safe way.”

“Communication is essential, no issues will ever be sorted until communication is in place. This rings true within our organisation and especially when working with other people in health and care. With clear communication we can make sure everyone is on the same page, and we’re all working together. There’s no ‘this person does this, this person does that’. There’s clear communication that goes out. This is what to do, and then everyone does the same thing.  

“It prevents complaints, it prevents accidents, it prevents loads of things having that good communication. I think that’s one of the things that makes home care needs different. Residential homes, care homes, hospitals, they all work together. They’re in the same building.  

“But in home care we are segregated. We’re in the office, they are out doing the care calls. Carers are our eyes and ears in the community. We rely on them to keep us informed. It’s vital we use Nourish Better Care at Home to feed the right information both ways and keep them informed too.”

“It makes it much easier for us to link in with our carers, because you can put alerts on there for them. It’s very easy to send emails and text messages and tag carers where necessary. 

“You can write an update on there. ‘District nurses have said etc etc’ and then you can tag carers in the update. So, when they will go to the call and use their phone and to log into the app it will come up. They need to acknowledge they’ve read it before they can continue. You’re not having to do lots of manual stuff. It’s one thing, tag all the relevant carers that are going to support that person for the next couple of weeks. Put an end date to it and the communication is sorted. 

“We can also do this with notes the carers leave, which is fantastic for promoting carer to carer communication. Because the carer reads the notes of the other carer before proceeding. This approach creates a continuity of care that benefits our carers and the people they support.” 

“Nourish makes it easier for our carers to flag things to the supervisors. If they see something they need to alert, they will write up their notes and they’ll click a little button and it will say supervisor alert. That will ping through to us in the office that someone’s not just written notes, they’ve pinged up notes that need reviewing. Which helps us respond effectively to prevent people having deteriorating accidents. 

“A lot of the alerts were already available to us with Nourish Empower. Now with Nourish Better Care at Home we can build upon that functionality. It gives us more access to be able to do more, and to be able to change more information easily. Which is vital for responsive, preventative care. Supervisors deal with the OT’s, the physios, the GPS, the district nurses. Now we can easily get that information across to where it’s most actionable. Leading to more informed carers and better outcomes for the people receiving support.”

“I love the family portal. We have a lot of people whose families want to be involved in their loved one’s care. Which previously for us meant sending out a lot of weekly care note updates. Which is an understandable request. 

“But, if someone goes off sick and someone forgets to do it, then you get a complaint. The family haven’t had their notes. They’ve missed out the crucial communication. Let’s face it, it’s always due to communication. With the family portal that communication is so much easier. They can go in and check up on their loved one. Which keeps them informed and frees up time for us to focus on other things. 

“Plus, with the ease of communication it’s easier for families to become involved with preventative care practises. Especially with some of the people we support who don’t have as many weekly calls.”

“Our primary goal a lot of times is to prevent deterioration and accidents. What we can do if it’s a long term issue is use tasks to note the support they need. 

“You can create specific tasks on every client and make them individual. For example ‘Jeff’ can take his medication himself. However, you must go and check that they have taken it and highlight it if he hasn’t. That can be a task for every call, and we can leave it on there for as long as we like. This promotes personalised care, and helps us support individuality and autonomy for the people using our service.  

“Certain clients will want to wear Minnie mouse pyjamas on a Wednesday because that’s just who they are. So, that task would stay on there because it’s individual to them. When you look at care you have to be individual. You have to be holistic. That’s how you start to try and give individual care.”

“You’ve been brilliant! I’ve been messaging a lot as we set up Better Care at Home. There’s always going be things that come up so it’s fantastic to see that everyone is really responsive. Our Customer Support Manager (CSM) is even proactive with us. 

“He called us once just before a bank holiday to say he won’t be available. He asked ‘Is there anything else you want to go through with me before I’m off for a couple of days?’ So we quickly went through some things, and we were well set up. It’s not as if the system has been put in and we’ve been left to work it out for ourselves. You never get used to a system until you play with it. It’s very reassuring to know that we can try things out for ourselves and still know there’s people to reach out to for guidance. 

“The support team are fab as well. We ask for more acute support from them, and all they normally need is a screenshot. I’ll just use the snipping tool, chuck it to the support agent. They’ll come back shortly with a solution for us to try out. Between our CSM and the support line we are well resourced to make sure we get everything we need from the system.”

“When the West Sussex Local Authority came in to inspect us they were very happy with Nourish. They came in for what is a lot like a mini CQC inspection. They had a lot of questions about the functionality of the platform. ‘How do you check your appointment times and length of calls?’ ‘Can you audit the necessary information?’ ‘How do the supervisor alerts work?’ 

“They really liked the supervisor alerts things and the amount of audits you can run through Nourish. Those aren’t features you commonly find with digital homecare platforms. stuff you can run through it, they liked that it was it was there handy quick you know that sort of thing. The efficiency of the system impressed them, and how it helps us centralise our information.

“Approximately half of the people we support receive funding through the Local Authority. So their satisfaction with Nourish was a big win for us.”