Caroline Cares for You

What are the biggest factors that have helped your business grow to be such a success?

“We are proud that we started small and kept re-investing in infrastructure, our staff, training and our clients by making the care we deliver good enough for our own parents. We listen to our staff and clients and meet regularly with them all.

"We gained our Outstanding CQC rating through grit and determination back in 2018. This led to great recommendations locally and both staff and clients come to us first as we are seen as the best. We keep building on this and with Nursebuddy we know we can keep retaining our rating."

With staffing an industry-wide challenge, what strategies do you use to retain carers?

“We salary all our staff rather than pay per visit which gives our team stability, we then utilise times not at visits to catch up on training and personal development. We don’t discriminate and have a range of carers including apprentices and one over 70.

"We treat our team like a family - we give everyone their birthday off (it’s the law!) and ensure they always get gifts for Christmas, winter car kits, star of the week awards. We have an open door policy and have a wellbeing team WhatsApp group which we use to encourage each other with top tips and challenges - baking, keep fit and meditation - to mention just a few of our initiatives.

"Our staff turnover is very low (one carer left to move to Devon to be with family) and we rarely advertise to recruit due to our reputation."

How has changing to Nursebuddy helped your home care business?

"We were using paper to do our rotas then texting out them to each team member - it was a daily nightmare and something we look back at with dread, as we made mistakes and it took forever.

"We went to the Care Show and were overwhelmed by the different systems available on the market - thankfully we came across the Nursebuddy stand and the expertise we had that day was exceptional to complete tech novices. The team explained things in layman’s terms and really gave us an understanding of what we could achieve.

"Nursebuddy has certainly changed our lives - rotas can be done in minutes, can be edited and changed 'live' to suit our client’s needs. As one carer recently said: “It’s like having a personal encyclopaedia in my pocket about each of my clients”. The system is always evolving and we love that we can have direct consultation on that. We started off just using the rota element now we use it all! It’s so versatile having everything in one place and we are now getting closer and closer to our goal of being paperless."

What has been your biggest challenge using Nursebuddy and how have you overcome this?

"We are very keen to support clients in rural locations as we feel they often get left behind.

"Signal is often our biggest challenge in these areas but we have worked with Nursebuddy and the help and technical advice has been amazing.

"We are now trialling the GPS facility for areas that have poor coverage which allows us better coverage."

What is the one Nursebuddy feature that you really can't live without?

"Can we be greedy and have two?! The rota element is amazing as is the eMAR. We can make changes on the spot which is exactly how care works - it can change in an instant when clients become poorly. We still have nightmares about paper rotas!

"Huge thanks to the team at Nursebuddy who go above and beyond."

Anne Durnion
Care Manager, Caroline Cares for You