As you know, the need for care is steadily growing. According to The King’s Fund Social Care 360 Report, demand for care has risen by 11% since 2015 / 16. And in the report, they explain that ‘This is likely to reflect both an increasing older population and increasing disability among working-age adults.’
This ongoing increase in support requests – coupled with the need for innovative and highly-personalised care delivery - means complex care provision becomes even more vital. But what makes complex care different to typical home care or supported living?
In this article, we’re exploring exactly what complex care is, and what makes complex care delivery different, with insight from supported living provider, Transforming Support.
What is complex care?
Complex care is specialised, long-term support provided 24/7 to those who have significant care needs, whether that be for mental health, physical disabilities, learning disabilities or neurodiversity.
Complex care providers offer a range of support to their clients in a variety of different settings - from medical, physical, personal and emotional support - helping those they care for live fulfilling and meaningful lives.
What makes complex care different?
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Care planning
Complex care can differ to that of standard domiciliary or supporting living as it often requires specialist support for round the clock care. Complex care workers can be trained to provide support for specific types of care – such as for neurological disorders or neurodiversity - being hand-picked for the client’s individual needs.
It takes careful consideration to both produce a complex care plan and fulfil it every single day. That’s because an individual’s care plan will outline not just their preferences, their future goals and their current abilities, but also their complex medical needs that likely require multi-disciplinary support.
A complex care plan may also need to consider where that care is being delivered - whether it’s live-in care, visiting care or respite care - with care workers needing to cover for a variety of different scheduling requirements.
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Rostering
On the topic of scheduling, complex care rostering can often require significant organisation. That’s because it’s incredibly important to get the right people with the right client to ensure high quality care is being delivered, from one to one support to shared care. And because each client will have the own individual care plan and support needs (whether in their own homes or in shared accommodation), creating an accurate roster requires a considerable amount of planning.
Transforming Support - “Rostering can work in varied ways for one-on-one or shared support. Depending on their needs, people we support may require one-on-one for the entirety of a shift or two-to-one or even three-to-one support. We need to get that information rostered and invoiced to match each contract and evidence that all staff allocated to that individual have delivered the support.”
Plus, coordinating schedules, ensuring adequate coverage, and optimising the roster to match the specific - and often significant - needs of each person can be a challenge (particularly for complex care providers who have large staff numbers, multiple locations and a wide variety of client need / age ranges). Being able to efficiently and effectively roster the right people at the right time is integral for delivering seamless, compliant care for those with complex needs.
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Invoicing
The various care needs and rostering intricacies we’ve explored can ultimately result in further complexity around invoicing. And in our Care Trends Report 2024, 63% of care providers told us that individuals within their finance teams spend between 4-10 hours per month each amending invoice discrepancies.
Transforming Support - “We required more visibility of the support being provided to the people we support and staff members’ performance. This involved connecting contracted hours commissioned versus service delivered and creating clear traceability between invoicing, support hours, incidents, and the individuals involved.”
And as we’ve already touched upon, complex care can be delivered by multiple support workers at once, or for multiple clients at once. Care providers need to be able to invoice this care delivery correctly, depending on who received what support and when. Managing these complexities accurately and efficiently is crucial to ensure correct invoicing and financial sustainability.
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Payroll
Almost half (45%) of care providers in our Care Trends Report 2024 also told us that the management of complex shift patterns and / or payroll categories is a challenge for them. Understandably so for all care services, but particularly for complex care providers who’s complicated rostering and invoicing lead into the accuracy of payroll.
Transforming Support - “A major element required for efficiency was to streamline payroll reconciliation… Having visibility alongside the operational and process change will save people time and effort—it becomes a five-minute task in the morning instead of a three-day job at the end of the month, so it is much easier!”
Complex care providers need to be able to differentiate between things like multiple pay rates and shared care or filling in unexpected gaps in the workforce before submitting payroll. Not easy when services find themselves manually reviewing and amending thousands of lines of reconciliation each month for complex care delivery that already has many intricate processes across multiple regions.
Care Management for complex care providers
For supported living care provider Transforming Support, they needed a care management solution that could seamlessly keep up with all these complexities and more.
“It's not just the people you support who require that complexity and that support; it's every aspect of the business...”
Our DSCR Assured care business management solution, previously known as Care Cloud, combats the complexities of social care provision, for all types and size of provider.
Check out exactly how Care Business Management was the answer Transforming Support was looking for: Transforming Support’s Story