Care Plan Planning

Care Plan Planning

The Care Plan Planning Screen is where you tell the system what care your Clients need, and what the baseline plan in terms of timing for that care looks like. 

Essentially, the care that you plan here becomes your baseline. Each week the Visits for the Client will be booked into the Visit Schedule/Rota for you based upon this. It’s often referred to as a ‘master plan’ or a ‘stamp’. 

Additionally to the Visits and their planned times, the system can also allocate Workers based upon the information in this baseline. The bottom half of the Care Plan Planning screen (where the calls are laid out) has a Worker column. If a name is present in this column the system will attempt to Allocate the Visit to this Worker, meaning it appears on their Rota without further intervention. If the Worker is still Available (isn’t off work, sick, on holiday or busy elsewhere) this will be successful and the Worker will be allocated. 

This screen really holds the key to success for the entire system. Having a well-planned baseline, with as many Workers (called ‘Preferred Workers) in this baseline as possible means that getting to a finalised rota on a weekly basis should be quick and easy, with you only having to deal with occasions where Workers are on holiday or sick etc. and a replacement needs to be found. 

Both this and the following article aim to explore two different but equally valid ways to get to the same end – a well-planned baseline. 

It is worth mentioning at this point that this is JUST a baseline. The fact that the baseline produces a Visit on the rota for Monday at 9am does not mean that it can’t just be simply amended to a different time in the Visit Schedule if it needs to be, the same being true for Workers it allocates. If one worker, or the time of one Visit, needs to change, there is no sense in amending the baseline/master plan for this. What you want to do is enter the details of where the Visits will be MOST of the time. They can always be amended as a one off. 

This article will look at what could be described as a more simple method of entering an effective Care Plan, although it can also be said to take much longer. It does, however, mean that your Care Plan/baseline will be complete by the time you finish.

• Start by Navigating to the Client > Care Plan Planning Screen
• The top section of the screen displays Care Plans themselves, which is basically a list of Contracts that the Client has. The bottom section, called ‘Plan Visits’, deals with the when and where of normal recurring care, and is where you set the baseline
• Click New under Care Plans and enter the Care Plan Properties
• Ensure you select the appropriate Contract, as this contains information about who to invoice for the care you are generating.
• Ensure the Start Date reflects the first day of your working week.
• Click OK to save the Contract. If a Client has several Contracts you can just repeat this process (e.g. once for Private and one for Social Services)
• Click New under Plan Visits
• This is where the important information is held. This is about when your Client has care, as you will need to enter information about the delivery of that care needs to happen. We will start with what care the Client has on a Monday (replace with another day if they don’t have anything on a Monday in your example!)
• Start by selecting which Visit Type suits this Visit you are planning. E.g. Personal Care. The Visit Types will be in a dropdown for you to select
• Set the Preferred Times for the Visit, e.g. 9am, and set a Duration for the Visit. You may wish to ensure this matches with the policies provided by the funder. Remember, we’re entering the time they have care on a Monday.
• Click the Recurrence Tab (which is where you can select days on which this care occurs)
• Choose a Start Date for the recurrence which reflects the first day of your working week.
• Select Occurs Weekly and select on which days the care recurs, in this case tick Monday only. It is important you tick just one day using this method as although ticking multiple is a valid method as well it’s discussed in the next article.
• Select the Tasks Tab and click new to add specific Tasks that will need to be performed by the worker attending the Visit. Certain Tasks will require a worker to have corresponding training and capabilities in order to be rostered to the Visit.
• Click on the Workers Tab. A list of Workers who can do that call on a baseline basis will load up. Double click on a name to make them the preferred Worker for that Visit
• Click OK to save the recurrence, you will see that the 9am Visit is entered, occurring Weekly on a Monday, as well as the Worker.
• The trick is to repeat this method for all times and all days in which the Client needs care. You can take a shortcut by right clicking on a planned Visit and clicking ‘Copy’. This creates a replica that you can simply enter and amend quickly rather than starting from scratch.