Friends of the Elderly Case Study: Innovation in Person Led Care

“KareInn provides a platform that not only enables us to digitally evidence our care, pro-actively monitor improvements and save time, it ensures we stay on the cutting edge of new and developing technologies, like acoustic monitoring.”

Steve Allen, Chief Executive, Friends of the Elderly

About Friends of the Elderly (FotE)

Friends of the Elderly (FotE) is a charity that has been making life better for older people since 1905.

From serving up ‘Penny Dinners’ to WWI veterans to pioneering innovations in dementia care, caring for older people is at the heart of all that they do. The charity offers residential, dementia and nursing care from nine homes across England. FotE also offers daycare services, home care services and free to access services, such as a grants service for older people in financial difficulty.

The charity aspires to a society where all older people are treated with respect and given the opportunity to live fulfilled lives. They firmly believe in listening to and empowering residents and work with them to produce a personalised care plan that reflects their views, choices and needs throughout their stay.

Steve Allen, FotE’s Chief Executive is also a board member of the National Care Forum (NCF) and prior to that, was vice-Chair of the United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA). Steve is passionate about providing excellent care and introducing innovative technologies in care home settings. FotE chose KareInn’s person-centred software solutions to deliver on this mission.

Read on to find out about the challenge Friends of the Elderly gave itself and how the partnership with KareInn helped to deliver on this challenge.

The Challenge

FotE wanted to utilise technology to provide better services for residents. Their vision was to lead the way and help move other organisations in the social care sector forward.

Three years ago, the charity introduced KareInn’s digital care planning platform across their homes. The platform enabled them to create customised digital care plans, set end-to-end workflows for staff and assign specific tasks to staff and monitor their progress with those tasks. The powerful management reporting gave the charity a 360-degree view across their care homes enabling them to easily identify incidents and risks and create actionable plans to address those risks.

Senior care staff reported gaining over 90 minutes back on each care plan review. — Manager, FotE

The system gave care staff more face-to-face time with service users and managers greater visibility and assurance to meet CQC regulations.

The staff and management found KareInn was easy to use and were quickly able to adapt to a new way of working. There was immediate evidence of added value for managers, staff and leaders across the charity. Posts written on tablets at the point-of-care were created for individual residents throughout the day, not just at the end of a shift, enabling better quality and more detailed information to be evidenced as part of the care plan.

“Posts are now much more person centred whereas before basket terms were often used.” –  Senior Carer, FotE

Three years on and KareInn has become FotE’s long-term technology partner.

“At Friends of the Elderly we were looking to partner with the provider of a digital care planning system that would grow and continue to innovate over the years ahead, providing us with cutting edge care planning technology.”

 Steve Allen, Group Chief Executive, Friends of the Elderly

 “We have formed a deep and lasting partnership that has been built on trust where new innovations can be tested. For us, FotE has become an equal partner, respectful of what we both can bring to the table and we pro-actively introduce them to innovations that enhance the quality of services they deliver.“ 

Rachelle Mills, CEO of KareInn

The Result

The impact KareInn’s Digital Care Planning platform has had on FotE can be summarised in four key areas:

1. Evidencing high levels of care staff engagement with the system with KareInn’s person-centred software solution.
2. Providing managers with greater visibility.
3. Giving front line care staff time back – more face-to-face time with service users.
4. Improving the quality of information recorded.

1. Evidencing high levels of care staff engagement with the system using KareInn’s person-centred software solution

• On average, 10,000 new records are captured per service user, per month, with an average of ten words in each record – this has remained consistent over the years.
• Quick tools designed to help inform visual trends have proven popular. The number of weight recordings per service user has increased to an average of 4.3 per month, allowing these trend graphs to become critical elements in care decisions.
• Care staff have readily adopted the features, including the task management system, known as “Nudge”. The Nudges help the unit manager to plan, organise and manage the home more efficiently. It also enables care staff to complete actions and evidence the outcome for the service user.

2. Providing managers with greater visibility

• Home managers are able to monitor service user records in real-time and ensure appropriate actions are being taken and feedback is given soon after entries are made.
• The Management Dashboard provides an instant snapshot of entries and areas of care requiring attention. This helps unit managers zone in on areas that need improvement.
• Individual trend graphs for service users to allow the unit manager and senior care staff to spot cases that require early intervention.
• As a result of being able to see trended weight graphs over time and compare these to resident MUST scores, the home managers are able to move away from uniform weekly weigh-ins for all residents and instead set weigh-in periods that are more tailored to the individual.

3. Care staff get time back; more face-to-face with service users

• Senior care staff report they have gained over 90 minutes back on each care plan review due to the simplicity of the system, the removal of duplicated effort and the readiness of information.
• The management team feel more informed, as do care staff, and time has been saved in informing family members e.g. ‘has the doctor been to see my Mum today?’
• The management team are pleased about the time saved by care staff – this is because care staff are now recording more information than ever before. With KareInn’s person-centred software solutions staff are able to easily produce even more personal care notes.

4. Improved quality of information recorded

• There is a significant increase in the volume and accuracy of information being recorded versus paper. This is as a result of real-time data input via a mobile device. Care staff explained, “it’s easier to get into the habit of the recording after helping the service user, I prefer to do it then and there rather than at the end of the shift.”
• Unit Managers report that “posts are now much more person-centred whereas before basket terms were often used.” An example given was a service user who had declined a shower but had accepted a bed bath – this was documented in detail rather than referencing that ‘personal hygiene was supported’.
• There has been an improvement of the legibility of information provided vs paper, as text entries are now easier to read than handwritten notes.
• Some care staff are using the voice recording option to make their care entries.

Friends of the Elderly are also working with KareInn on an Acoustic Monitoring pilot, supported by the NHS Digital Pathfinder grant.

The FotE pilot involves linking KareInn’s electronic care planning with Ally Care’s acoustic monitoring to significantly improve care outcomes in its care homes. The data collected from acoustic monitoring is fed into KareInn creating an even more powerful information base for each resident. FotE is also utilising the integrated technology to develop a new way of working at night which allows the care team members to safely respond to alerts rather than going into residents’ rooms and disturbing their sleep.

Results from the pilot research so far are impressive:

• 55% reduction in night-time falls,
• 20% reduction in hospital admissions, and
• 75% reduction in the number of unnecessary physical night-time checks conducted by staff. This in turn is freeing their time – to the equivalent of approximately £13,000 per staff member per year – for other care planning and support activities.

Read more about FotE’s work with KareInn and Acoustic Monitoring and the resulting benefits.

“It’s only through working in partnership with our clients that we are going to use technology to help solve social care challenges and discover new opportunities that are there. Together we bring both sides of the jigsaw puzzle to create a complete picture.”

Rachelle Mills, CEO of KareInn