The Care Show Birmingham
Every year, as sure as the solstice, The Care Show Birmingham arrives. The high harvest festival of social care each October. This year’s event was particularly important since it was the first event we attended since being acquired by Nourish. With this new partnership behind us we couldn’t wait to head to the NEC and experience what was to come. Our two days were filled with new connections, old friendships, and the opportunity to meet the best minds and brightest hearts in social care.
Preparation
Preparation for The Care Show begins months before we start packing cars in Bridgwater. It was exciting to get the chance to show off the new functionality that had been created as a result of our partnership, and to describe what the future holds.
Nourish Cares
Over the past month, we have been getting to know our new partners at Nourish more and more, both technologically and personally.
Nourish plug-in adds highly requested features such as Care Plans and a Family Portal to CarePlanner. Due to Nourish’s membership on the Assured Supplier List, CarePlanner users can access funding when upgrading to the Nourish plugin if previously they used paper-based care provisioning via their respective Integrated Care Systems. Our team is looking forward to developing new features alongside Nourish for our users.
Care Show Birmingham Conversations
It is always the conversations that make The Care Show what it is, and this year was the best yet on many fronts. We had the pleasure of meeting a wide range of people throughout the two days of the show. We barely had a moment to ourselves on our stand!
It was a great opportunity for us to learn so much about the realities of providing home care. We continue to shape the development of our technology based on these conversations. An approach that Nourish shares with us. So the chance to talk to so many people brought many welcome insights.
The opportunity to catch up with people who use our system in person is a consistent highlight of this event for us. We were delighted to see so many CarePlanner users in person in Birmingham.
The Seminars
The conversations aren’t just on the stands at The Care Show, they’re everywhere! This year, alongside Nourish, so were we!
Driven by Health with Care put together a panel on Intelligent Human Care which featured insights from Chris Pearson, Managing Director of MED e-care Healthcare Solutions, Phil Brown, Chief Product Officer of KareInn, Christoph Marr, Managing Director of Marr Procurement Limited, and chaired by the brilliant Victoria Buyer of Buyer Consulting. The conversation covered a wide range of challenges and ideas for implementing technology in social care. Especially focussing on the ways we can ensure we always work with people in the process.
Lorcán was also asked to join Five on a Bike for their ‘Meet the Speaker’ series. (which was happening directly across from our stand) This was a fun interview with York to discuss the key points of the seminar, touching on the role technology can play in the future of care, and how we can work together to ensure it is in a person centred way.
You can watch the interview on Five on a Bike’s Youtube page here.
There was a wide range of great talks over the course of the two days that we were delighted to attend. Nourish occupied several theatres. Nuno led a panel on ‘How effective use of technology and data can lead to improvements in the quality of care and the creation of new models of care’ which was a particular highlight. It featured contributions from Community Integrated Care, Kenward Trust, Style Acre and MHA Homes. A well balanced and deeply experienced panel that highlighted the potential of technology and data use in care.
We also saw a great talk on rasing Social Care’s profile that featured The Care Workers Charity and our friend Isaac Samuels. One of the last sessions we attended was one of the most memorable. Philli Me Up preformed a touching darg show alongside their heartbreaking talk on LGBT+ experience in social care.
TASKSMASTER Game
It is a tradition at CarePlanner to bring a little bit of fun to our stands. In the past we’ve employed a lot of different approaches. This year we went with a TASKSMASTER game to highlight our new Tasks feature. We challenged people to balance hats, stack cards, and multitask.
Five on a Bike even had a go which you can watch here.
Congratulations to our winners!
1st Place Gateway Care Services
2nd Place: Sophia
3rd Place: Care Inclusive
Leaders in Care Awards Show
There was no better way to start our time in Birmingham than attending ITP Media Group’s glamorous Leaders in Care Awards. A huge congratulations to all the winner’s including Right at Home who deservedly took home the coveted ‘Home Care Provider of the Year’ Award in a tightly contested category featuring the amazing providers Home Instead, Eleanor Nursing and Social Care, Mumby’s Live-in Care, The Good Care Group, Christies Care and Bluebird Care. As well as a huge congratulations to the inimitable Jane Townson OBE of the Homecare Association for her well earned ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award.
Saying Goodbye
We had an incredible time in Birmingham for The Care Show. It set the stage for what promises to be a very bright and exciting year ahead of us with Nourish. As we head into Winter we are hard at work acting upon everything we have learned. 2023 was an incredible year, but 2024 is shaping up to be even bigger!
