More innovation from leading in-home care franchisor, Caremark.

15 October 2020

West Sussex County Council have included Caremark’s innovative PatchCare® system in their Dementia strategy for 2020 – 2023 as a key initiative and the Care Quality Commission have hailed it as “an Outstanding’ model of innovation.”

PatchCare® from Caremark is an innovative approach to in-home care, delivering a wide range of personalised care services. It covers small geographical patches, so clients benefit from regular, more tailored visits throughout the day.

The PatchCare® model, which has been designed to help tackle issues such as loneliness and social isolation, matches a dedicated small team of regular Care & Support Workers up with small geographical patches of up to 10 clients. It means clients benefit from regular, more tailored visits made by the same PatchCare® staff each day, helping to ensure continuity of care, improved outcomes and a reduction in loneliness and social isolation.

Crucially, it offers a flexible framework to support people to have a positive focus and become active partners with accountability for their own wellbeing. There is potential to deliver significant cost savings to primary and secondary care services, through reduced ambulance callouts and enhanced integration with the NHS and local voluntary and other community-based services.

A CQC inspector said: “A man had not painted for about 20 years. Caremark matched him with a lady who had chronic anxiety who was phoning primary services many times a day. He started painting pictures for her and painted her Christmas cards. They developed a strong friendship as a result of PatchCare®. Those are really meaningful connections.”

This responsive and flexible new approach sees care workers stay in touch via a secure messaging app, working together to deliver support as and when it is needed, rather than being constrained to fixed times. Feedback from Caremark’s West Sussex pilot office indicated that recruitment and retention of staff, a fundamental challenge for the sector, was positively impacted. Staff enjoyed enhanced job satisfaction, a salaried wage and deeper relationships with their clients and with each other, with clear benefits for service delivery.

In an annual State of Care report the CQC said: “The key factors that enabled PatchCare® to be developed were strong leadership, funding opportunities from the local authority, and effective partnerships. For example, partnership work between the local authority and Caremark included evaluating the wellbeing of people using the service and measuring outcomes”.

The PatchCare® model is now being offered to all franchisees in the network. 


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