Home Care Services Herefordshire, Shropshire, Leominster, Ludlow, Craven Arms, Church Stretton, Bromyard, Hereford, Bishops Castle, Tenbury Wells and Kingsland. Kaleidoscope Care Ltd.

Kaleidoscope Care

Make staying at home the better choice
Thirteen years of rewarding and highly worthwhile service kalcare.co.uk

See our in house costings (revised 13-4-2009) See our UKHCA costings Both methods show the real cost of providing good homecare in a highly rural setting with many short visits.

A homecare service is only as good as its most recent visits. See our 2009 Care Quality Commission quality return here See our 2009 internal service quality survey results here

This information is published in line with our No Secrets Management Policy We give preference to organisations which understand and respect this policy.

GENERAL NEWS:   June 12th 2009      News Archive

1. New Care Manager:   Hazel has now settled in and has completed her induction. Her expertise is already contributing to our quality drive. Medication policy has been improved and, among other things, an overhaul of our short course training programme is now underway.

2. Hours are climbing steeply after the usual dip from late January to early May. Privately funded assignments have risen more than socially assisted ones. Developments are expected with our work with Shropshire Council in the near future. However, recruitment of good care staff remains very difficult.

3. Progress with the Herefordshire Re-Commissioning project: 'Electronic monitoring' is now being considered where increased reliability and greatly increased carer security will transform services, both for our staff and for the people we provide care for. This is in the early stages but if the project is to be chosen, we hope to wholeheartedly participate

The development of a 'fair charging tool' is underway and the joint Local Authority and NHS Commissioning Team are making huge efforts to really understand and appreciate the detail of highly complex and varied cost bases to home care agencies. The extent of their will to find out and really understand how things are working is remarkable and deeply appreciated.

The third project, '(brokerage)' is to understand and form a method of allocating care assignments to home care agencies. This strand will gradually absorb the other two as a coherent, practical and good value system emerges.

For more information, members of the Re-Commissioning Project team can be contacted on 01432 260000.

4. Major progress on costing our operations: We have now completed the UKHCA costing system. An Excel file, slightly altered for commercial reasons, is here Improved figures for the Kalcare System can be found here    Both methods give an insight into the complexity and surprising cost of running homecare services. We feel that the UKHCA system is interesting, but it has at least one serious failing due to it, perhaps, not being developed from scratch to work in the homecare sector. The lack of significant use of the UKHCA costing system by private homecare providers may be symptom.

5. No Secrets Management Policy: This has been introduced to make the keeping of unnecessary secrets automatically wrong. The key part of the policy is to ensure everyone is told what they need to know to be able to do their work as best possible. The only secrets to be kept are those that are explicitly stated under confidentiality and other appropriate instructions. This approach opens up the way for a no blame policy for much of the operation with few exceptions, a major one being for any person breaching the No Secrets Management Policy. The policy explicitly includes the Directors.

The idea was developed from 'No Secrets' in Protection of Vulnerable Adults here and from fundamental reporting principles in Health and Safety practice. Japanese management practice towards the handling of information was also a major prompt towards the creation of this radical but highly effective policy. It stands at the heart of our organisation culture and is clearly stated in our formal Policies and Procedures. The No Secrets Management Policy can be seen here

6. General news information: Swine Flu: direct.gov nhs psgb britishchambers dh.gov nhs Alzheimer breakthrough?: sky timesonline guardian news-medical bettercaring    Articles on Dementia: telegraph telegraph   Alzheimer Associations: alz.org alzheimers.org    Wikipedia: wikipedia     Where you can get assistance to pay for care

For a better, independent life

Founded in 1996, Kaleidoscope Care has grown to provide service to many people across North Herefordshire and South Shropshire. Our business is split about 50% local authority and publicly financed, and 50% self funding, private clients.

A growing presence serving self-financed homecare has been a major feature of recent growth and we now have a leading regional expertise in serving privately financed service users. Our service includes issuing calendars to clients

informing them of the carers scheduled to visit the following week. This reflects the levels of service that have help create our mixed client base, and of course, the calendars benefit all clients, regardless of how they are funded.

Following the recent management buyout, added vigour has started to develop the business and improve communications. Special attention is being paid to rapid response to enquiries, correspondence and requests for information. In addition, significant capital expenditure has introduced modern, but tried and tested computer technology. This has removed much of the paperwork, but we still depend on the skill, judgment and dedication of all our staff to ensure the quality of service.

We believe in a simple useful and practical service. This policy extends throughout the organisation dictating we invest in the areas which will enhance the quality of our service. Our first priority is to operate correctly and efficiently for our clients. This simple web site is an example of our approach.