Electronic systems to improve home care services across Warwickshire
Warwickshire County Council is to introduce new electronic systems for home care, resulting in an improved service for customers receiving home care as well as greater efficiencies and cost savings.
This work is in line with the national Care Services Efficiency Delivery programme (CSED). The programme was established by the Department of Health to support the implementation of the Gershon Review’s recommendations, the 2004 review of public sector efficiency.
One aim of the CSED programme has been to share experiences of introducing electronic systems for home care among 150 local authorities. Twenty of these authorities are now working with such systems and have proven the benefits for customers, staff and organisations involved in delivering services.
CSED will be actively supporting this initiative in Warwickshire during 2007, as part of their national programme of work.
Initially, the county plans to introduce systems to automate production of home carers’ weekly work schedules. This will replace currently used manual mechanisms. Subsequently, home visits will be recorded electronically to provide accurate information about the times that visits begin and end. This will eliminate the need for paper timesheets and free home carers to focus on delivering service, rather than completing paperwork.
Customers using home care services and their families will take part in the project to implement these new systems, along with home carers themselves.
Benefits will include:
· Elimination of the risk for home care visits to be missed.
· Increased confidence and peace of mind for customers’ families that their relatives are being cared for.
· A greater degree of flexibility in responding to the requirements of customers.
· Enhanced Health and Safety for both customers and home carers.
· Overall, the increased efficiency will enable more time to be focused upon the delivery of the home care services.
· More effective use of resources will result in savings of £274,000 per year when the new systems are fully operational.
Councillor Colin Hayfield, Warwickshire County Council’s portfolio holder for Adult, Health and Community, said: “This is an important first step in modernising Home Care Services so that we can be more flexible and responsive to the changing needs of our residents.”