What is a care plan in residential care and why are care plans important?

Care plans are essential in order to provide outstanding quality care 

A care plan in residential care is crucial in ensuring that the appropriate and right level of care is provided and that the resident's wishes and preferences are respected.   

Each individual is different, and everyone has different needs and wants, preferences, wishes, and abilities. Therefore, understanding the needs of each resident is essential for a truly person-centred approach.   

A care plan allows staff to easily provide person-centred care tailored to everyone's individual needs. 

What is a care plan in residential care?

• The type of support the person being cared for requires 
• The best way to provide the support 
• What is important to the person being cared for 
• Considerations on ensuring safety for the person being cared for 
• Planning of actions such as what are we going to do and who is responsible for which actions. 

What does creating a care plan involve? 

Creating a care plan is often a collaborative process with the person being cared for, relatives, representatives, care staff, clinicians and other health professionals.

In order to create a care plan, a full review of the person being cared for is undertaken so that areas of need can be considered.  It is important to set goals and plan actions around these goals with clear direction.  

Here are a few examples of the types of support that might be included in a care plan:  

• What's important to you 
• What you can do yourself 
• An assessment of your care needs 
• Your wishes and preferences 
• Adaptations or equipment to make your home more comfortable and safer 
• Records of care that have been provided  
• How to manage your individual complex care needs
• Desired outcomes 

Why are care plans important in residential care?

Care plans are essential for providing outstanding quality care; they help to outline the level of care needed for each person being cared for and help to direct care staff on the roles they need to undertake to provide good quality care.  

It is important to have a care plan for each individual due to the varying levels of support needed, requirements, and preferences. Here at Person Centred Software, we ensure that our clinical care planning system allows care providers to set up each resident’s individualised care requirements.

Person Centred Software also ensures that care staff have easy access to person-centred information through features such as the ‘who I am’ resident profile, that is available to view at the point of care via the Care Delivery App. For those resident's that experiences specific behaviours, their profile can also include a Personal Behaviour Support Plan. For example, when a resident being cared for is experiencing anxiousness, having access to their Personal Behaviour Support Plan at the point of care is incredibly useful as it provides intervention strategies for care staff to implement and help ease the resident's anxiety, which may include directions such as listening to music to help calm them down.

The care plan aims to provide a better overall outcome for the resident; one major advantage of digitally created care plans is that they take significantly less time to create, meaning care teams can spend more time with residents. And, the care plan information is available at the point of care.

You can read more about the benefits of using a clinical care planning software by clicking here.