You might explore home care software based on a specific pain point or set of needs. But what else are you missing out on? Our blog explores. 

Many home care providers select their home care software based on a specific need. It might be a need to implement a friends and family portal, digitise their services or more efficiently handle financial management. But home care software can carry a multitude of benefits to home care providers. Whilst addressing specific needs is important, taking a step back and considering the while picture can result in tangible benefits being delivered across your care services. This blog will examine the top 7 features you should look for when examining home care software solutions. 

What is home care software? 

To begin with, what is home care software? It’s the software that should support every area of your home care delivery. Where client records were recorded and stored on paper, home care software makes the process digital. This makes your services more agile, with the ability to record information on the go, interact with care workers and their schedules, create friends and family portals for your clients and record and share data easily. 

Why do I need home care software? 

Home care software can deliver a multitude of benefits to your home care services. Perhaps most importantly, however, your clients expect a modern service. Being able to offer outward facing services such as a friends and family portal, updated with real-time information, helps to reassures your clients and their loved ones. 

No less important is the consideration of data security. Our previous blog explored the topic of cyber security for home care providers. In short, keeping the data process safe is important from a GDPR and CQC inspection standpoint.  

Not only does the CQC want evidence that you’re processing and storing data safely in line with its data security and protection toolkit, but the regulator will also need straightforward access to your data to perform inspections. Being able to easily generate accurate and up-to-date reports from your data is something home care software can support. 

What if I don’t need a home care software solution? 

Home care software is an important consideration as your business grows. If you’re only caring for a small number of clients with a small number of care workers to manage, then the outlay might not make sense for your business. 

As your business grows, however, the complexity of your operation will grow with it. With more clients, more carers and more considerations, it becomes increasingly unmanageable where you rely on manual ways of working. Staying on top of finances, client needs, scheduling, reporting and maintaining an outstanding level of care provision can quickly become overwhelming. Home care software can help you by automating swathes of your business, supporting effective communication and the ongoing delivery of outstanding care. 

What you need from a home care software solution 

1. Care planning 

From onboarding clients into your services to being agile in the face of their shifting needs, your home care software solution should support you in creating, revising and delivering person-centred care plans bespoke to the needs of each client. Being adaptable is key. Demands can change in an instant, so your service needs to be responsive. Your carers also need up-to-date information on each client, ensuring they deliver the right care at the right time, 

2. Scheduling your care workers 

Once your care plans are established, you need to schedule care workers to deliver them. Home care management software can remove much of the guesswork in scheduling, helping you to respond instantly to short-term changes. This keeps your services on track, makes the most efficient use of your resources and delivers your care plans in the most effective way. From matching the needs of the client to the skills and experience of the care worker, home care software can support you in delivering continuity of care by ensuring that the right people are in the right place at the right time. 

3. Record information and communicate in real time 

A good home care software solution should provide you with a care worker app. This can be easily downloaded onto the carer’s mobile device and used to complete care visits. As well as equipping your carers with vital context and information on each visit, a care worker app should further support lone worker safety and provide real-time information back to the office. This supports care workers in going about their tasks with confidence, whilst also supporting them in capturing and recording outcomes as they go, removing the need to write up notes and manual data entry. 

4. Complete financial management 

Having confidence that your care worker pay and funder billing are accurate is essential to the financial health of your home care service. By linking to your care plans and care worker schedules, understanding what has been delivered, home care software can support you in maintaining accurate records of who has done what, when. You can further create timesheets for your care workers, making it easy and accurate for them to log care visits and any travel expenses incurred. By automating much of the process, home care software can reduce friction and human error in your financial management. 

5. Create reports on your care services easily 

Being able to easily and accurately report on your home care services provides valuable insights on your business. It’s also important for CQC inspections, not least as the first stage of most inspections will be virtual. A good home care software system should provide your service with bespoke dashboards for each user, enabling them to interact with the information they need. When you need insights, they should be easy to obtain from the data you hold across your care services. 

6. Friends and family portal 

Communicating with your clients and their loved ones is an important and reassuring aspect of modern care delivery. By linking to your care plans and schedules, care software systems can create bespoke, real-time portals through which your clients and their loved ones can see the schedule of their care visits, care due to be administered and care administered.  

7. Support, security and compliance 

It’s important to consider the team behind your home care software solution. What security certificates do they possess? What ongoing support will you receive with the software? What’s the system uptime availability? How will your data be handled? Given the importance of selecting the right home care software solution, it’s imperative to consider the whole package and select a partner that can support the needs of your business. 

How Certa from CACI can support your care service 

Certa from CACI is a complete home care management software solution designed to support every facet of care delivery. Whatever support you need in enhancing the delivery of your care services, Certa can help. 

Delivering tangible benefits to homecare services by making compliance, consent, auditing, reporting and care plan provision straightforward and streamlined, what difference can Certa make to your homecare services? 

You can find out more by booking a no-obligation demo of Certa today. 

Everything you need to know to make the best education MIS decision for your team, your processes and, most importantly, your pupils.

Choosing the best education management information system (MIS) isn’t just about ticking boxes on a features list. It’s about ensuring every child’s journey through education is supported, visible and continuously improving. With the right MIS, schools and trusts can simplify administration, strengthen collaboration and, most importantly, improve outcomes for children.

But how do you find the best education MIS for your specific needs?

Here’s how to choose the best education MIS to deliver long-term value and real impact.

1. Start with your goals: are you focused on outcomes?

The best education MIS isn’t just a back-office tool, it’s a strategic asset. Start by identifying the outcomes you want to achieve:

• Greater transparency for parents and guardians?
• Reduced duplication of effort for your staff?
• More informed decision making for leaders and professionals?

Impulse from CACI is designed with these goals in mind. It’s built to help you deliver better services and outcomes through a collaborative, transparent and child-centred approach.

2. Look for flexibility and scalability

Every school or trust is different. A rigid system will limit your ability to respond to changing demands. Instead, choose an education MIS that grows with you.

Impulse’s modular design means you only use what you need, from core pupil data to specialist support services, early years, EHCPs and more. You can scale up or down as your needs evolve.

3. Make sure it supports collaboration

Education is a team effort. The best education MIS should enable collaboration between schools, professionals and families with secure, structured access to the information each stakeholder needs.

With Impulse, a child’s record is accessible through tailored portals. Schools can update information, professionals can contribute assessments and parents/guardians can view relevant progress. This transparency ensures aligned support at every stage.

4. Prioritise automation and efficiency

Too many schools waste valuable time on repetitive admin. An effective MIS should automate low-value tasks, reduce duplication and streamline processes.

Impulse automates workflows and provides a centralised, shareable child record, freeing your team to focus on adding value, not manual data entry.

5. Think holistic: can you see the full picture?

Siloed data leads to blind spots. Choose a system that integrates all aspects of a child’s educational journey into a single view. This helps you and your team to understand the context of every child.

Impulse joins the dots across 17 integrated modules including SEND, Child Protection, Educational Psychology and more. Impulse helps you to identify risks earlier and deliver more coordinated, inclusive support.

6. Don’t forget support and partnership

Technology is only part of the equation. You need a partner who understands your challenges and works with you to get the most from your MIS.

Impulse from CACI is more than a product. It’s a collaborative approach. We work alongside your team to co-design your MIS usage, train your staff and ensure long term success.

The bottom line: choose a system that works with you

When evaluating MIS options, ask yourself:

• Does it empower my staff and reduce their admin burden?
• Does it support collaboration across my school, trust or local authority?
• Will it scale with our needs as we grow or change?
• Will it help us achieve better outcomes for children?

If the answer isn’t a confident “yes” to all of these – keep looking.

Or better yet, explore how Impulse from CACI can help transform how you deliver education services, meet your strategic goals and, most importantly, support every child.

Read the Impulse brochure to learn more about our approach, our modules and how we’re already helping schools and trusts deliver smarter, more efficient education support.

If you’re facing tightening budgets and an increased demand for efficiency, understanding the specifics of how your care service runs is essential. If you’re facing the scrutiny of a CQC inspection, understanding and being able to portray how your care service runs is also essential. Modern systems play a fundamental role in supporting care services to achieve these aims. From acting as a central database to helping software users collate and interrogate the data they need, having the right care management software in place can make reporting and your CQC inspection that much easier.

Displaying accurate data depends upon accurate data capture. By giving prominence to data within your care service, you can help to ensure its smooth transition from the point of recording through to displaying it in reporting dashboards across your organisation.

Your data, displayed your way

Being able to easily access, examine and report on the data produced across your services is important in understanding care delivery, what’s working and what can be improved. This covers point of care delivery through to financial management.

It is, therefore, important to provide each user with easy access to the data they need. Your care management software provider should be able to help you here. Certa, for example, is provided with a suite of out of the box reporting and dashboards. These cover the areas of your operation that you need, with the ability for you to self-serve and create your own reports and dashboards. Of course, our team is on hand to assist you when you need.

If that sounds daunting, system training is readily available to those who need it and is covered at the point of implementation.

This gives you the freedom to interrogate your data your way, not just work with a one size fits all solution.

Understand your care services

With robust and bespoke reporting mechanisms in place, you can truly get under the bonnet of your care services. What is working well? What could be improved? Where can efficiencies be found?

Only with the right software supporting you can you answer those questions.

Okay, so what do I need to be looking at?

To get you started, Certa provides the following reporting tools upon implementation, although you can set up bespoke reports or fall back on our team to help you:

• Operational management: Future staff usage, unplanned visit analysis, missed visits, real-time care worker analysis, my tasks (what the user has to complete) and staff compliance (e.g. key accreditations and where they might be expiring).
• Client management: A full overview of each client’s timeline, covering previous and planned visits, actions taken and billing.
• Financial management: Full timesheet reporting with an audit trail of authorisations for timely and accurate billing and pay.
• System administration: A complete audit of system users and admin trails.
• Senior management: Profitability reporting and business insights.
• Client portal: Planned and delivered care with the ability for clients, their friends and family and to see what has happened and what is planned for future visits.

How does this help with CQC inspections?

The CQC, at the point of inspection of your services, will ask five key questions in line with its single assessment framework (SAF). Is you service safe? Effective? Caring? Responsive to people’s needs? Well led?

Whilst parts of the assessment comprise speaking with your staff, opening up your service to inspectors greatly assists in transparently laying out how you work. From here, you can evidence that visits are being conducted by trained, compliant staff in a timely manner, that you consider and respond to the needs of your clients and that you provide the best possible environment in which your carers can succeed in delivering services.

This demonstrates that you’re safe, effective, responsive and well led. To help you with this, we’ve put together a comprehensive CQC inspection checklist, which you can get for free here.

Conclusion

With the aim of your service doubtless being outstanding care delivery to your clients, being able to easily monitor this constantly helps to keep your services on track all the time.

Making reporting and analysis part of your business process makes your services constantly transparent. This makes it easier to identify patterns in your business, understanding what’s working well and what could be improved.

It further helps in demonstrating the quality of your services to prospective clients. CQC inspections are irregular and imperfect as a means of showcasing suitability to clients, so being able to put an arm around their shoulder with aspects such as a friends and family portal makes your services transparent to your clients, too.

You have all the necessary information on your services already, but it’s making it easily accessible and transparent that’s often the difficult part. Certa aims to make this straightforward, putting reporting and insight front and centre of your care management software.

Check out our CQC checklist for a comprehensive guide to preparing for inspections, and head to www.caci.co.uk/certa for more information on Certa.

The new CQC inspection framework poses five key questions of care services. Our checklist is designed to help you be prepared

CQC inspections are a challenging and stressful time for any care service provider. There is always an element of the unknown. However, if you have everything in place it can make the process as smooth as possible and alleviate much of the stress and uncertainty. We’ve created a free checklist that you can use to help prepare for your CQC inspections. To start, we wanted to look at the CQC inspection framework and how often are CQC inspections. 

How often are CQC inspections? 

How often CQC inspections are conducted on care services depends on when the care service was registered and the results of any previous inspections carried out. 

For newly registered care services, they will be inspected within the first 12 months of opening. 

If a care service achieves a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ result, then they will be inspected again within the next five years. From CQC data available from August 2023, c.5% of adult social care services in England were rated as outstanding, or roughly 1200 services. Achieving such a result within the CQC’s new inspection framework satisfies them that a service is meeting or exceeding the minimum expectations of recipients of care. 

Where a result falls below this and achieves a CQC inspection result of ‘requires improvement’, the CQC will inspect that service again within the next 12 months, until such a time that the CQC has determined that the service has improved.  

Falling below that and achieving a result of ‘inadequate’ according to the CQC’s inspection framework means that a care service will be inspected within six months. Improvement in such services is considered urgent, so inspections are more frequent to ensure that the necessary improvements happen. 

The CQC’s new inspection framework 

The CQC’s new inspection framework is its single assessment framework (SAF). This CQC inspection framework asks five key questions of every service it inspects. The CQC asks if services are: 

• Safe 
• Effective 
• Caring 
• Responsive to people’s needs 
• Well led 

By obtaining responses to these five key questions, the CQC’s new inspection framework gains deeper understanding of each care service. The CQC answers these questions by visiting the care service, speaking with employees and clients and going through care records, any complaints and feedback. 

How often are CQC inspections and how can you ace them? 

You want the answer to be ‘every five years’. Obviously, you want to be inspected as infrequently as possible. This is the surest sign that your care services are on the right path.  

To help you in achieving this, we’ve put together a checklist that helps you to prepare for inspections inline with the CQC’s inspection framework.  

The checklist takes you through each question in the single assessment framework (SAF), helping you to prepare documents, responses and ensure that staff are briefed prior to a CQC inspection. 

Why not take a look? The checklist is free to download and you get your copy here. 

Whilst the operations of education and youth justice practitioners run separate from one another, there are areas of overlap. In these areas, information sharing and working from the same record can be beneficial to both parties. Ultimately, it is also beneficial to the young people involved. A shared understanding via a single view of each young person can help in both intervention and improving outcomes for vulnerable young people.

Common understanding over crucial matters is a prerequisite. For example, where children are arrested, their school must be informed. This means that schools need to be able to send and receive information to and from the police and youth justice workers.

Whilst that might be an extreme example, it does of course happen. The sharing of information is the crucial aspect here, though. How far can this be extended to improve outcomes for children? Such examples highlight that information sharing is possible.

Attendance records

With every child required to attend school, their attendance data is instructive, not only to their school and parents/carers, but where applicable, social and youth justice workers too. Where a young person who is in the youth justice system misses school, it is imperative that this information is shared with their youth justice team.

Children missing school is an obvious red flag to youth justice and social workers. Mandatory reporting on the attendance of looked after children is already in place, further reporting on children known to other external agencies can help them greatly.

Sharing information and data is a key area in preventing children and young people from falling through the cracks.

How can shared data help in a multi-agency scenario?

There are various estimates as to the number of children missing education. This depends upon the parameters set and the threshold of days missed. NCB estimates that the number is just shy of 50,000. This number is for children who are not registered at a school and are not receiving appropriate home schooling.

Running parallel to this is the estimate that some 50,000 children are involved in county lines drug dealing activities. Of course, not every child missing education is going to be involved in such activities, but the numbers bear a striking similarity. If children aren’t at school, what are they doing? Perhaps more pertinently, under the auspices of which agency do they fall?

When children fall into the youth justice sector, an understanding of their school attendance record can be insightful in painting a picture of their journey. Non-attendance gives some strong clues as to what they may have been doing. Establishing this data link with education can help youth justice teams and workers greatly.

Similarly, when a child moves school, it is beneficial that their new school has a clear record of them. If they have been involved with youth justice workers, it can help in understanding their background and their requirements. Similarly, where health concerns are prevalent, it’s important that the school has oversight of such information.

A single view of the child

This is a topic we’ve explored in our recent white paper. “At present we are seeing far too many examples of children not receiving the care they need because of a disjointed service and system response. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.”

The information held by one agency is often valuable to another. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so creating efficiency and a more joined-up response to the needs of vulnerable young people makes a great deal of sense.

This can be achieved with a single view of the child. If there’s a consistent record that can be accessed and added to by multiple agencies, it makes it far easier for disparate parts of the system response to work efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion

There are demonstrably strong ties between the work done in agencies such as schools and youth justice teams. Linking that work together, where necessary and appropriate, can help to improve outcomes for the children and young people in their services. It can further support the work of other professionals and agencies involved in a young person’s journey, too.

The technology exists today to help make a difference; to help join the dots in a journey. This helps to remove duplication of effort, guesswork and assumptions. If all parties can work around a single source of the truth, it makes understanding a young person’s journey and interpreting their story much easier. Bridging these gaps in understanding at schools and in youth justice teams can further help to tackle the complexity in each story. Having a basic understanding of their journey is so important in shaping their future.

This is a topic that we explored in our recent white paper, Single view of a child. You can download your free copy here.

Early Years funding is essential in providing the best possible outcomes to children from the outset of their educational journey. Funding depends on several factors. The rules themselves, too, are undergoing change. From eligibility to age of the child and the number of hours funded, local authorities need a system in place that can be agile to these changes. Failure to respond to Early Years funding changes can have a negative impact on children and their families. It is essential to be adaptable in the face of changing rules. 

How does Early Years funding work? 

Early Years funding is based on eligibility criteria. In September 2024, a new 15 hour working parent entitlement was introduced. This saw the expansion of funding extend down to nine-month-olds. In September 2025, the entitlement will be increasing to 30 hours.  

This requires a re-working of the funding section of the software and systems utilised by local authorities in managing their Early Years funding. If the systems used can’t adapt to the changes, then it will necessitate a manual way of working out the rules and matching them to eligibility. This will further require manual effort in working out what is due to each provider. 

Having a system in place that can work out who is owed what is important for accurate billing and payments. This includes clawbacks from providers where children have moved nursery. Without a system to support the process, human error becomes an increasingly viable factor, as do elements such as falsified and inaccurate claims.  

With the rules in something of a state of flux at present, being agile to changes is vital. 

How can technology support Early Years funding? 

Technology can make the entire process of Early Years funding more accurate, easier for providers and easier for local authorities. Providers are required to submit headcounts to get funding from the local authority. Where local authorities can set providers up on a provider portal, it makes the process of submitting estimates, headcounts and amendments seamless for providers. It further makes the process easier for local authorities to track and manage. 

This also makes it easier for the local authority to see what each provider is owed, as estimate payments are worked out, based on their bespoke percentage rules. When the providers then submit actuals through the portal, the local authority can immediately see what the outstanding balance is for each provider and settle it. 

When rules change, your technology system should also be able to incorporate the new rules in a timely manner. This will result in a frictionless transition in your Early Years funding process. 

How Impulse Nexus helps local authorities with their Early Years funding 

We’ve designed Impulse Nexus to be responsive to rule changes, from funding periods to the age of children eligible. It is designed to make managing the end-to-end process easy. Impulse Nexus includes: 

• A providers’ portal through which they can submit estimates, actuals, headcounts and amendments 
• A live register of children at each provider 
• A banner to display which submission window is open, the status and how many days are remaining 
• A display of how many hours each child is claiming  
• Flags to indicate what each child is eligible for 
• The ability to bulk edit children’s hours 
• The provider can see a history of all submissions and how much was paid per child 
• The ability to reduce administrative time for your Early Years team 
• A full audit trail of submissions, payment rates and rejections 
• The ability to set your own funding periods, submission dates and rates 
• The ability to set up stretched funding models 
• Validation errors displayed in real time, with reasoning 
• Management area for local authorities to view and approve checks, validate the cross provider children, and children that haven’t yet been matched to a core record  
• The ability to customise funding types for legislation changes and regional requirements 

Ultimately, Impulse Nexus provides you with a clear and consistent process in line with your local authority’s bespoke rules. We understand that each local authority has different rules and processes in place, so being able to implement your process is important. It’s also crucial to have a system in place that can be adapted to changes in legislation.  

For more information, please visit our website. 

Every child in the education and youth justice systems has their own, unique story. How can this story be accessed, understood and interpreted by the various agencies that they come into contact with? A single view of each child, which is accessible to the multiple agencies, helps to form a consistent thread of knowledge and understanding. This can be used to provide not only the best available care to each child, but to improve efficiency across the services they interact with.

There are several examples where different agencies require the same, or similar, information. Teachers, care and social workers, police, parents, local authority professionals and youth justice workers – even doctors and health professionals – are all stretched; piecing together a young person’s story from disparate information points makes an already challenging task even more so. Information on a young person is too often siloed and inaccessible.

Creating a single view carries many benefits for both children and professionals. This blog explores the benefits of a single view of a child. This is not to say a single system response – different technology works for different agencies. We explored how interoperability between systems will benefit children in a previous blog.This blog sets out to explore the benefit of achieving this single view.

Improved efficiency and cohesion

With resources stretched, efficiency gains are vital in being able to provide improved outcomes to more children. Where personnel and agencies change, a single view is vital in them being able to hit the ground running. Where information is inaccessible and difficult to interpret, it can result in the same questions being asked and the same ground being covered.

Make it easy for new practitioners

Turnover of staff is inevitable. Making it easy for new personnel is imperative. Not only does it create efficiency, but it makes their job much, much easier. Starting from scratch with any child or young person is a challenging phase, with the need to build understanding and trust with them, particularly in a youth justice and social care setting. If new practitioners to a child’s journey can access and interpret their story to date, it helps them to understand the child, which helps them to take proactive steps immediately towards improving their outcomes.

Improve understanding of each child

There is so much that plays into each child’s journey, and so much information that is relevant to it. From school attendance data to police and healthcare records, it is a constantly moving and evolving journey. A simple oversight of the agencies involved is instructive; what care have they received and from whom? This helps to not only understand each child individually, but to implement data mapping which forms a more holistic understanding of children in similar scenarios and what is the best way to help them.

Linking disparate responses

Each agency has information that is relevant to them and only them. Where the single view is beneficial is in areas of overlapping responses. For example, schools need to know if a pupil has been arrested. Similarly, if a child is diagnosed with SEND, that information is relevant to their entire educational journey. It is also useful information for youth justice workers in understanding young people in their services. A sharing of such information is vital in the multi-agency response to such children. If this information becomes siloed, it will hamper the response of other agencies to a young person.

Timely, accurate information

Once information is known, recording and sharing it with other agencies in a timely manner is crucial. Again, the single view is crucial, since it enables other agencies to access such relevant information against a child as soon as it is available. Accessing such information can help agency to tailor their response to a child as and when they need to interact with them.

Conclusion

The single view can be achieved in different ways, but it works to the same outcome: the improved outcomes of children and young people interacting with various agencies.

Where professionals can record their information, it is vital that it doesn’t become siloed. The sharing of relevant information with other agencies will fundamentally help them in achieving the goals they themselves set out to achieve. Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to support this with appropriate data sharing to enhance understanding of children and young people to improve their outcomes.

This is a topic that we have explore more comprehensively in our recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

In cases around vulnerable children, we repeatedly see how many different agencies and professionals are involved in their story. For a young person in the youth justice system, there are several agencies all attempting to intervene to improve their outcomes; youth justice teams, police, social workers, their school, parents and health workers. With so many agencies potentially in play, how can a clear and consistent thread of information be created on each young person for the betterment of their journey?

A single view of the child for youth justice workers

Having access to a single thread of information, a single source of the truth, is vital. It helps to remove duplication of effort not only for each agency, but for the young person, too. With multifarious agencies turning up on a carousel of touchpoints along the journey, many covering the same ground, it erodes trust in the services that are in situ to help them.

It can be challenging enough within a single agency. Youth justice teams are stretched. Human relationships don’t work to a set plan, so changes in personnel across a young person’s journey are inevitable. How can a practitioner who is new to a young person’s case understand and interpret their story without needing to repeat previously asked questions?

A central database of activities, touchpoints and notes is essential. A single thread of information makes it easier for information to be looked at and understood. If notes are siloed into individual practitioners, for example if they are recorded only via pen and paper, then it makes it incredibly difficult for others to pick up the pieces when they need to.

If interoperability between practitioners within the same agency is impossible, then how can this information be shared effectively with other agencies?

Achieving interoperability for the benefit of youth justice work

Interoperability starts within a single agency, in the way in which information is recorded, shared and understood within it. Interoperability then needs to extend to multi-agency scenarios.

The several touchpoints in the journey of a young person within the youth justice sector demonstrate this. How can the police effectively share information with the other agencies involved? How can youth justice teams make their information available to the other agencies? By creating a mutual base of understanding around each vulnerable young person.

Understanding is essential to improving outcomes. We also see the affect of things such as trauma in a young person’s story. How can their story and circumstances be interpreted in improving their outcomes? These often intangible aspects can go undetected – having a consistent base of information can help in identifying them. There’s no one size fits all solution to dealing with youth offending, so being able to interpret and understand their journey from a comprehensive base of information is crucial.

A single source of information is to the benefit of everyone; the young person, their family and the agencies involved in their journey. But how can this be achieved?

Technology response to interoperability

The underlying system of recording information is fundamental in achieving this. In the same way that there is no one size fits all approach to improving outcomes for vulnerable young people, there is no one size fits all technology system for the agencies involved in their journey.

It is inevitable that different agencies will deploy different technology. Information and security will be different for each, as will the method of recording of information. But how can the relevant information within each agency be made available for wider use by external agencies which are seeking the same outcomes?

Everyone is pulling in the same direction, so it makes sense to share information and valuable insight. Each agency needs to understand the intervention points of the others.

Conclusion

Every touchpoint recorded with a young person in the youth justice sector is relevant to their journey. It forms part of the system response to them and their case. Having a holistic view of these touchpoints is vital for youth justice teams and workers in interpreting their story and intervening appropriately to help improve their outcomes.

Creating a single view of each child helps each agency to better contribute to their journey. Interoperability of systems is essential in achieving this. Using software that facilitates interaction and data sharing with other agencies utilising different software will facilitate this.

Where information gets siloed, it essentially gets lost. It sits within an agency in isolation, useless to the other touchpoints a vulnerable young person will have with other agencies. Bringing this information together not only creates understanding around a young person’s journey, it also creates efficiency in the process for the agencies involved.

If everyone can record on and interact with a single source of the truth, it will help every agency and youth justice worker to understand and interpret the journey of the young person.

Creating a single view of the child is a topic CACI has explored in a recent white paper, which you can download for free here.

Person-centred plans help you to unlock the potential of your care services in delivering the best possible outcomes for each of your clients. No two recipients of your services are the same. They require different medication, different services, get on with different people and interact differently with you. This poses a challenge to your services, since there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Deploying the best care management software can help you in delivering digital care plans and digital care planning that puts your clients first and keeps them informed of their care journey. Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Digital care plans

Moving away from paper records and manual ways of planning carries numerous benefits. By creating digital care plans, you can more easily access information, edit it and share it.

Easy access to digital care plans enables you to report on them internally to better understand patterns in your services. You can then identify what works and what doesn’t. Does a client have a better relationship with one of your care workers than any other, for example? You can then consider such factors when scheduling your care workers.

One thing the CQC looks for during inspections is the role your clients play in their own care. Maintaining digital care plans makes it easier for them to input into their own care and understand their options, including for aspects such as end of life care.

The ability to share your data on clients is also a factor considered by the CQC. Being able to share aspects of your services, such as digital care plans, demonstrates that you can support your clients in their interactions with other services. For example, if they decided to join your services from somewhere else, being able to import and understand their data will help you in providing the best possible care from the very beginning.

Putting clients in control is important. The best care management software will help you by providing a portal through which clients and their loved ones can interact with their digital care plans and your services.

Digital care planning

Digital care planning puts both you and your clients in greater control of the care journey. Feeding your digital care planning into a friends and family portal puts an arm around your clients and their loved ones. Offering such transparency of your services, past, present and future, is impossible with paper records stored in an office.

Clear communication with your care workers is another vital step in delivering outstanding person-centred care to your clients. The best care management software can support your digital care planning with a mobile app. Through this, you can make your digital care plans visible to care workers as and when they need them. At each visit, you can provide clear instructions as to expected time of visit, access and medication required to be administered.

As your care workers work through their visits, they can record outcomes as they go. With real-time visit information available to you, you can then update the client’s portal accordingly, reassuring their loved ones that visits have happened.

Complete digital care planning in this way, from initial plan creation to scheduling care workers to recording visit outcomes, provides you with a complete audit trail of your services. This will make life easier when it comes to CQC inspections, for example. You will be in a strong position to simply make your digital care planning available to inspectors as part of their inspection.

How the best care management software can help you

By having all your data in one place, it makes access and transparency more straightforward. Who did what, where and when? The best care management software will enable easy interrogation of your digital care planning.

It should also be flexible to yours and your clients’ needs. No two clients are the same, nor are two care services. Being able to implement the digital care plans that you and your clients need is imperative in any outstanding care service.

Digital care plans are just one facet of how the best care management software will assist your services. Digital care planning, however, is one of the most important since it outlines how you deliver care to your clients. Ease and transparency are essential. Your software should support this.

We’ve written a free to download white paper outlining the top seven features that the best care management software should provide. From digital care plans to financial management, it should underpin your outstanding services.

Why not take a look? It’s free to download here.

Person-centred care planning and delivery is the backbone of any outstanding care service. It’s something that the CQC actively looks for when conducting inspections, a hallmark of quality care services. From planning and delivering to putting your clients in control of the care they receive, how can you best deliver person-centred care? Download a copy of The top seven features you need from your care management software now.

Person-centred care starts with the person

It’s obvious to point out, but the best way of delivering person-centred care is by involving them. Understanding each client’s medical and care needs is one thing, but how involved are they in the process of the care they receive?

A central record for each client is essential. A care management system can support you in this by providing an easy to create and easy to edit record for every client. When they enter your service, being able to understand their medical record and the exact care they need collaboratively with them is imperative. You can then provide this information to your care workers ahead of and during visits, ensuring that the right care is administered at the right time.

But people’s needs evolve over time. From new prescriptions to changes in preferences, keeping the care you provide to each client up to date is vital. It is also important to be able to share their data with third parties and other providers for any care they receive outside of your services. A care management system can support you in easily and securely sharing relevant data in line with data protection regulations.

The needs and desires of your clients may also change over time. In a lot of care settings, aspects such as end of life often need to be considered. Putting your clients in control of this process is essential. Every client deserves a bespoke care plan and the dignity and respect to make their own decisions.

Involve their loved ones in their person-centred care

In a lot of cases, your clients will have loved ones who are actively interested in the care you provide to them. Reassuring them of upcoming and completed visits, the activities and tasks undertaken, as well as any actions to be taken, is a great way of involving them and evidencing how person-centred you are being.

This can be achieved through the provision of a friends and family portal. Your care management software should support you in establishing this, making simple, secure logins available to authorised users to access a client’s care plan. This is also a great way of getting feedback from your clients on the services they are receiving from you.

Users logging on to the portal can see upcoming and completed visits and obtain information such as medication administered and to be administered. A portal is also a great way of receiving input from family members too, where small details or observations around tweaking your care planning can prove really transformative for the person you support.

Understanding clients’ preferences

A simple way of going above and beyond in providing person-centred care to your clients is to understand their preferences. The CQC notes that these should be recorded once and shared with relevant stakeholders across your care service to avoid duplication of questions with clients.

This helps to add a human touch to their care. If, for example, you have someone who owns cats, this could be something that could be discussed with them during their visits.

Also, if they have upcoming life events, such as a birthday, prompting this information to your care workers means that it’s easy for them to mention and take into consideration. Understanding your clients and sharing this type of understanding with your care workers can deliver excellent outcomes.

Your care management software can help you with the provision of a mobile app for your care workers. They can access visit information and see details such as birthdays and interests in the app as they go about their visits.

Continuity of care is another important means of providing person-centred care. Clients will naturally establish relationships with certain care workers. By rostering care workers consistently to clients, you can provide this continuity.

Again, your care management software should help with this. Making rostering easier, technology can suggest ‘best fit’ allocations of care workers to care plans, considering not only relevant skills and experience, but also factors such as them having a positive relationship with a care worker.

Conclusion

There are several factors that play directly into providing outstanding person-centred care. From understanding the client and their medical needs, to sharing this information with your care workers and rostering the right staff to the right clients, person-centred care requires research, effort and consistency.

Care management software can underpin this process. Creating a central record of each client makes understanding them and their bespoke needs easier. Equally, a central record of each care worker facilitates smoother alignment of your care plans and your staff rosters.

It’s one thing providing person-centred care, and another evidencing it. When CQC inspections inevitably come around, being able to display your care planning, rosters, client visit history and records of communication, you can more easily demonstrate to external stakeholders that your care service puts its clients first.

Every client deserves their own bespoke care plan. Every client deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Ensuring this happens can be easier than you might think.

We’ve covered this and more in our latest white paper which outlines the top seven features the best care management software should provide to you. It’s free to download, so why not take a look?