Support plans: Why going digital is a gamechanger - FitzRoy

Support plans: Why going digital is a gamechanger

Author: FitzRoy
Published: May 19, 2022

Support plans capture the goals and aspirations of the people we support and the steps we need to take to meet them. Service manager Dean told us why moving from paper to digital support plans was a gamechanger for his team.

Dean said: “I was really excited about the idea of going digital. Because I’m quite an enthusiastic person and my team are all so focused on getting us to outstanding, they were open to a new way of working.

“All staff had training around how to use it, but at first I realised we were still capturing more on our paper support plans than our digital ones. I took away the paper support plans for a week or two so we were fully committed to being digital, and it worked. It was what we needed to shift our mindsets to recording things digitally, and since then it has been brilliant.

“Since the app was first rolled out it has got so many new features, it has come a long way. Every suggestion we have made to be changed has been done within 24 hours, it’s brilliant.

It’s great at capturing and evidencing everything, we used to say ‘if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen’, and now we say ‘if there’s not a photo, it didn’t happen’! With such a drive on active support it’s great that we will be able to share with CQC every step we are taking for the people we support.

“Not everyone took to it straight away, we definitely have some staff who are more hesitant with technology. My tip to other managers is to buddy up the people who are more confident with people who are less confident so they can learn from each other. Even members of my team who weren’t sure at first are loving it now.

“My advice for other teams who are finding the transition from paper to digital difficult would be to persevere with it. Talk to your team and finding out what the sticking points are and work out how to overcome them. It is worth it in the long run, now we are able to evidence so much more, and we can flag things that need to change on a support plan easier.

“We used to have to trawl through paper to find a piece of information, now it is all in one place. It means my team can be better at their jobs and spend less time writing and more time with the people we support. That’s the biggest difference it has made, it has given us all time back in our days.

“Support plans should be a living document, not read once and updated just once a year. What we want day to day changes, and so does the needs and wants of the people we support. Digital support plans make it so much easier to make sure the support that is required is the support we are providing.”