John McGinley, Group Manager in Older People
Care Services has been in charge of home care at London Borough of
Waltham Forest for five and a half years and manages both internal
service provision and the commissioning of contracts with Private
Home Care Providers.
Currently around 40% of home care is delivered by the in-house
team and 60% is contracted out. Between them the Internal Team and
Private Home Care Providers carry out approximately 15,000 Home
Care Visits each week. John explains that this is more visits than
most London Boroughs. "Waltham Forest is still slightly
traditional", he continues. "We still carry out a lots of half hour
and fifteen minute commissioning because we still provide services
that many other Local Authorities have phased out e.g. laundry
service and shopping".
John made the decision 5
years ago that home care would get its own IT/Software systems. The
first step in achieving this was the installation of OLM's 'Care
First' software. Once OLM was up and running the next logical step
was to introduce Electronic Monitoring. John recalls that the key
driver for introducing EM was cost control. "We felt we were paying
for more than we were getting". John also felt that introducing
monitoring would ensure greater transparency, the efficient running
of services and compliance with 'Best Value'. "Before the
introduction of Electronic Monitoring we found costs were
continually going up regardless of measures to bring them under
control", said John.
John first heard about CallConfirm when he was contacted by a
member of the CM2000 team. However, before Waltham Forest settled
on CM2000 as their Electronic Monitoring Supplier they went through
a rigorous selection process. This included a formal tender, which
pitched CM2000's CallConfirm service against competitors, including
Panztel, Jontec, TUNSTALL, and HET Software Solutions.
CM2000 won the tender and CallConfirm was then piloted for six
weeks in order to assess if the system would work for Waltham
Forest. The pilot was carried by the in-house team, with 15 home
care staff involved. John remembers that at the forefront of his
mind was "testing the interfaces to see if they worked and the
impact on the staff themselves".
John was not surprised when the staff coped well with the
introduction of monitoring. He recalls "there was no negative
reaction from staff" which he puts down to a good working
relationships with the unions, familiarity with the type of
technology employed i.e. the daily use of mobiles/text messaging
and the fact that the in-house team were already used to the rotas
produced by the OLM system. "Once staff were used to working with
rotas, when CallConfirm came in it was the next natural step. The
internal team have now become so used to the system that the data
collected by CallConfirm is now used as a part of the appraisal
process", says John.
Installing CallConfirm across Home Care Services went very
smoothly and John is very happy with the reliability of the system
which he feels fits well with the robust nature of OLM's software.
John is now excited by the prospect of running payroll and invoices
directly from the data supplied by CallConfirm.
So what have been the key benefits for Waltham Forest?
The introduction of monitoring has reduced expenditure on home
care by a significant Margin. "We knew it would have an effect on
costs but we didn't realise how drastic the effect would be" says
John. He mentions a number of other benefits including; better
control of commissioning position. "We know what we are
commissioning and what we are getting" he says. "We also now have a
stronger understanding of how our service is delivered in-house and
externally. For the in-house service this means we can see pitfalls
in planning and therefore improve planning and service delivery.
And for external providers, we now know how well an agency is
performing so that we can decide if we contract with them, based on
their actual performance". Finally John feels using CallConfirm and
working with CM2000 has strengthened central control." John
believes if "you have a strong centre, you make sure the standard
of care is properly maintained."
Looking to the future, John would like to use CallConfirm Live
to allow staff the flexibility to work from home in the evenings.
He also sees an increasing number of applications for Electronic
Monitoring as care packages become more sophisticated by offering
greater flexibility.
John is quite forthright in his view of CallConfirm and the
service provided by CM2000. "I've not seen anything better than
CM2000 and consider them the market leader in Electronic Monitoring
provision".