Palmerston Care Home - What Good Looks Like

Palmerston Care Home is based in Westcliff-On-Sea and provides residential care for elderly residents and people with dementia. Ruth Gates, Registered Manager for Palmerston Care Home shared her experience of completing the digital ‘What good looks like’ self-assessment as part of a review of best practice in their use of technology.

Ruth found the self-assessment easy to follow and prompted focus on important areas around the use of technology and good practice. She felt the questions and prompts were important for quality assurance and demonstrating evidence of good practice in the use of technology.

She found that the self-assessment was very useful in providing visibility and steer to areas of digital infrastructure and connectivity and raised that it was very important for digital equipment to be reliably in place to enable the use of technology and software applications in the delivery of care and for staff to make use of their broader digital skills. This involves balancing time, cost and resources, and drawing on technical expertise in identifying and installing equipment that underpins the use of technology in care.

Under the Ensure Smart Foundations theme under the ‘What Good Looks Like’ framework, the self-assessment signposted Ruth to broad guidance around this foundational area of digital development, from internet connectivity to shifting from analogue to digital.

The self-assessment also brought into focus supporting the development of staff member’s IT literacy in the use of day-to-day technology involved in care, and how training and support can help people overcome language and technical barriers when using software and online applications. The self-assessment helps to prompt and signpost to available learning and training opportunities for staff and to coordinate training and skills information.

Going forward, Palmerston Care Home will be exploring wider resources under the framework and available support and training for staff in how they introduce, maintain and use technology in the delivery of care.