With dementia care in residential care settings becoming increasingly important as diagnoses rise, Person Centred Software has launched a new ‘Who I Am’ feature as part of its electronic evidence of care and care planning system, Mobile Care Monitoring.
The feature enables staff to provide a more responsive and personalised quality of dementia care and improve residents’ quality of life.
The new feature enables care homes to share vital information about residents’ routines, life story and wishes from the care plan with carers via the mobile application. These personalised routines are vital when caring for those with dementia as it helps them to maintain their daily functions and minimise their anxiety.
Benefits of the new feature are already being realised. The manager at a care home in Sussex reports that the ‘Who I Am’ feature helped a carer to know how to support a resident when they were anxious and upset; the carer saw on ‘Who I Am’ that reading a prayer would soothe them.
Similarly, a care home in North Somerset said that when a resident went to hospital, staff were able to provide personalised care and support. A hospital nurse got in contact with the care home to say that it was the best information she had ever seen.
Jonathan Papworth, co-founder and director of Person Centred Software, says, “It became apparent to us that whilst administration software helps care providers’ efficiency, it doesn’t actually help those delivering care.
"Social care really only exists because of these people, so we decided to focus on improving the lives of the care staff users. With the new capability of ‘Who I Am’ at their fingertips, carers have all the information they need to further help and support their residents.”
‘Who I Am’ is modelled on Alzheimer’s Society’s ‘This is Me’ tool and other one-page profiles that are widely used in social care to improve the quality of information and ease of information sharing. Not only is information available on carers’ devices, but the hospital pack provided within Mobile Care Monitoring automatically collates the information from residents’ ‘Who I Am’ profiles to ensure staff fully understand residents at every stage of their health and social care journey.
