What’s the problem?
Covid-19 has brought social care to the forefront of people’s minds. The nation has begun to recognise some of the issues the social care sector faces, such as PPE provision and lack of funding. However, there is one topic which could help improve outcomes for vulnerable people in social care: the use of data.
Currently, there are five key challenges when trying to use data in social care:
- Data is mostly paper based, qualitative and lacks detail
- Data on service users’ abilities are done by observation
- The voice of a service user is rarely captured in the data
- There is no historical data to study
This makes it difficult to access clear evidence of how individuals are managing daily living activities to ensure they get the right support at the right time.
Why is it a problem?
These challenges make the lives of service users and frontline staff more difficult. If you don’t have the data centrally recorded, it makes it harder to collate data and understand trends. Essentially, this means that we can’t ask simple questions which would improve our understanding of service users, like ‘how many people with learning disabilities across the UK can cook a ready-meal independently?’.
Add in that observations are qualitative, and you have the issue of how to tell if there is consistency across observations of people’s abilities. Importantly, if the data does not include the service user’s voice, how we do know the data accurately reflects their abilities and progress?
How can we help to solve this issue?
It’s better to start now than never. There are three steps identified here that we could take to solve this issue:
- Embed the principles of teaching using consistent methods to accelerate learning
- Recognise moving from a ‘cared for’ to a ‘facilitating’ independence is an educational journey all frontline staff need to go through
- Create user-based care focused on understanding independence for that user
AutonoMe can help with these three steps. AutonoMe’s app facilitates independence of vulnerable people, as it installs an education model in a social care setting. The app has hundreds of how-to videos for users creating a consistent teaching method for users to follow, even if their support workers change, which accelerates learning. An incredible 39% of AutonoMe users exceeded their target levels of independence, demonstrating how vulnerable people are more capable than we may think and the importance of consistent learning techniques.
Users can self-assess their care needs and this data helps frontline staff track a user’s progress towards independence. Frontline staff can also input their observations about users, ensuring that users get the right level of support at the right time. The app has had an extremely positive impact on users in facilitating independence, with a 95% user satisfaction rate.
London Ventures is an innovation programme, bringing together the public, private and third sectors to solve the big issues affecting our society. If you’re interested in how we can support vulnerable people, improve outcomes and promote independence, AutonoMe is an innovator in this field. Get in touch here to find out more about how AutonoMe could support vulnerable people in your locality.