County Care
Grant Wadge, Managing Director
Grant Wadge launched County Care in 2010, with a vision of providing Outreach Support to people with autism, learning disabilities and mental health issues. Operating across Surrey, West Sussex and Lincolnshire, his widespread team consists of 160 carers, who administer 3,200 hours of care each week.
As the business was growing, the software that Grant had used to set rotas and calculate wages proved to be inflexible and unreliable, so he was keen to find an alternative.
35 hours a week saved on rostering
The Problem
”Modifying the rota was proving very difficult on the original system; whenever changes were made to the master, the individual rotas weren’t updating automatically, so we’d have to go in and manually edit each one,” says Grant.
CarePlanner is designed to automate dozens of administrative tasks, potentially saving clients several hours each week. This was a big selling point.
“I came across CarePlanner at the Bournemouth Care Show in 2013, and was really impressed with their approach,” he says. “We organised an online demo so I could play with a trial version, and I found it very user-friendly. I also loved the fact that it’s a web-based platform.”
”Modifying the rota was proving very difficult on the original system; whenever changes were made to the master, the individual rotas weren’t updating automatically, so we’d have to go in and manually edit each one,”
“I came across CarePlanner at the Bournemouth Care Show in 2013, and was really impressed with their approach”
The Solution
The CarePlanner interface is very straightforward, intuitive and requires zero training. Grant soon got to grips with it and, in addition to the rostering, he now uses it to calculate invoices, wages and mileage.
He comments: “The ‘drag and drop’ feature is great, and the level of detailed information we can input is really handy. Working with people who have learning difficulties can often mean that visits overrun, so being able to review visit history with service user and carer information makes it easy to see where we should be making changes.”
Like Grant, many CarePlanner users comment on how simple it is to tweak appointments, especially when compared to other systems. “I rarely have an issue, but whenever I’ve raised a helpdesk call the team is very responsive,” he adds.
“I came across CarePlanner at the Bournemouth Care Show in 2013, and was really impressed with their approach”
The Result
CarePlanner immediately made a huge difference to Grant’s business; Scheduling 2,000 hours of care on the old system took two staff members around 80 hours each week. With CarePlanner, it only took 45 hours – nearly halving the workload.
Additionally, invoicing used to take around 20 hours, but it now takes 10.
The considerable time-savings has enabled Grant to focus on developing other areas of the business, evidenced by the fact that County Care has grown from providing 2,000 hours of care to 3,200 hours each week.
““If we were still using the old software, we would have had to recruit at least two more people to deal with the admin, but CarePlanner has saved us time and money”
He concludes: “If we were still using the old software, we would have had to recruit at least two more people to deal with the admin, but CarePlanner has saved us time and money. The most recent update has really taken it to the next level, and they’re clearly a very forward-thinking company. I’d rate them 8.5/10, and I look forward to seeing future developments.”
“The most recent update has really taken it to the next level, and they’re clearly a very forward-thinking company.”
