Radfield Home Care
20 April 2022
Overview
Radfield Home Care is a network of domiciliary care providers based in Bourne End, South Buckinghamshire. They are focused on providing quality-led care to local communities to provide care to people in their own homes. Radfield Home Care focuses on enhancing the quality of life, relationships and social interaction for older people within the community, supporting their independence to allow them to continue to live in their own homes instead of potentially moving into residential care.
To provide this care to people in the community, the Wycombe, Beaconsfield and South Bucks branches of Radfield Home Care currently employs around 40 care professionals, who spend the majority of their time as lone workers out in the field with lots of driving involved.
Radfield was looking for a better and more robust way for their on-call team to be informed that their field care team arrived safely at night, with some staff out beyond 10:30PM.
Hear all about how they use GetHomeSafe.
Shelley Healey, an office coordinator shares their thoughts below
"GHS definitely helps provide peace of mind to those members of the team who are out in the field, especially during the darker winter months. Sometimes they can be driving to new clients and in areas they’ve never driven in before, which in the dark can be quite intimidating for some people."
Challenge
Our business employs a care team who travel throughout their day, visiting clients in their own homes across South Buckinghamshire. They are often lone workers and the evening shifts finish at 10 p.m., with some employees not getting home until past 10.30 p.m.
Prior to using GetHomeSafe, to ensure employees were safely home, we had a WhatsApp group set up for the whole care team and those who were working in the evening would have to message the group to confirm they were ‘home safe’. This would be monitored by the team member who was on-call that evening, who would have to chase people to confirm they were safe if they did not message the group. This led to some late nights for members of the on-call team, some of whom potentially had early calls the next morning.
We therefore, realised a system was required that would automate this functionality and send alerts if a member of the care team did not check-in after their evening shift. This would remove the need for on-call to be monitoring a WhatsApp group and only be called into action if required.
This led us to discuss our needs with GetHomeSafe, who were offering a solution that seemed to meet our requirements.
Solution
Before the office shuts each day, one of the coordinators will look at who is out in the field for the evening and set them up on the GetHomeSafe web portal, with a conservative time for check-in back at home for each team member. They will then set the primary alerts to go to whoever is on-call for the evening.
The care team in the field then complete their shifts and as soon as they are home, log into their GetHomeSafe app and check-in to confirm they are safe.
So long as everyone checks in on time, nothing is raised. If someone fails to check in an initial alert is raised to on-call, to contact the relevant member of the care team.
As above, the system is primarily used by the coordinators, the care team in the field and the on-call team. However, alerts are escalated to higher levels of management if they go unanswered within a set time frame by the on-call member on duty.
What a lot of the carers really like is the fact that they are being tracked by GPS on the system. Therefore, if anything happened to them, say they had an accident or a breakdown and they were stuck in a rural location, we would be able to locate them easily and get help. This definitely helps provide peace of mind to those members of the team who are out in the field, especially during the darker winter months. Sometimes they can be driving to new clients and in areas they’ve never driven in before, which in the dark can be quite intimidating for some people.
Results
The main difference is the removal of the ‘Home Safe’ WhatsApp group. This has made life significantly easier for the on-call team who no longer are having to monitor in real-time who has checked in and can even go to bed if they so wish, knowing they will be alerted with a call if someone needs contact.
The system has been implemented quicker than I expected, and we were able to resign the Home Safe group speedily. After a few teething problems on the first couple of nights, which were to be expected with a few carers forgetting to check-in on the new app, now it forms part of their routine and it runs very smoothly for the most part, with very few alerts.
It also provides the team with reassurance, as they are GPS tracked and their last location can be seen on the portal easily, in case of an emergency.
From a business perspective, this also helps in a number of ways. We have a more defined process for the care team to follow which helps them remember to check in when they return home. In addition, we can track where people are if we need to and from a regulatory standpoint it is beneficial. As a care provider, we are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and there is a big focus on the management team implementing systems to ensure a safe and quality service. Utilising technology such as Get Home Safe is definitely a way to improve safety for our care professionals and is easily demonstrated to the regulator as well, which is highly beneficial when it comes to our inspections with the CQC.
All in all, Get Home Safe has definitely been a successful addition to our daily routine and provides real benefits to the team out in the field’.
For more information on Radfield Home Care, visit www.radfieldhomecare.co.uk or to read about Shelley Healey (Office Coordinators) perspective of the GetHomeSafe solution visit our Blogs.
