The “New Carer Test”

When auditing and reviewing a person’s care plan and risk assessments, my overarching principle is always:

If I was caring for this person for the first time, would these documents enable me to do a good job?

The basic function of all that paperwork is to ensure that a worker new to the person’s care doesn’t put anyone at a risk or disadvantage.

With that principle in mind, it’s not difficult to imagine scenarios where useful paperwork is critical, such as a home care worker who’s been called out at short notice on a Sunday morning to cover an unfamiliar round and is having to read care plans as they get the bus between visits.

They will stand a better chance of doing a good job if the paperwork enables them to:

• Understand the person’s needs, including critical medical information
• Address the person as they prefer and communicate according to their needs
• Know what tasks are expected and essential safety instructions
• Have some idea at least of how to go about these tasks without having to constantly ask questions about what to do, where stuff is kept, etc.
• Answer questions such as “remind me why I take this pink pill?”
• Have enough background / useful / essential information about the person to make appropriate polite conversation
• Are prepared for an emergency!

To do this, each person’s paperwork needs to be full of CRAP. That is, it should be:

• Comprehensive
• Readable
• Accurate
• Personalised

Comprehensive

The documents must cover everything. Of course 🙂 We’ll get into what the “everything” is elsewhere/in future.

Readable

They should be accessible to staff and the person.

This means they should avoid being overly wordy and technical, but also that they should be literally readable on whatever device or medium they will be read on.

Accurate

Assessments and plans must be up to date to the person’s current circumstances.

Personalised

What a person’s paperwork doesn’t need to include is the kind of generic information that care workers should know from their training or policy-level risk assessment considerations. So for example, if a person has Parkinson’s, there doesn’t need to be essays about Parkinson’s in general, just how it affects that person in particular. Generic information in the main care plan is a distraction and encourages the reader to skim.

That being said, generic information can be useful as refreshers for staff to read if they need to and should be available elsewhere. You can include a link in the care plan to make it easier, or add it as a printed appendix to a paper care plan. In the Z Cares App, information can be easily kept in the document library.

If you have any questions about care plan and assessment auditing, or any aspect of social care management, please do not hesitate to get in touch.