Delta Care Registered Manager Kat Nicholls nominated Annaliese saying “She has created some wonderful care plans on CareLineLive, where she has used Google Translate to ensure these were fully accessible to the clients by ensuring they were in both English for our carers and professionals to read and in their own language, which is Arabic. This was praised by the team who supported the two ladies we are supporting and the local authority.”
We’ve written a case study about how Delta Care works with Google Translate. Click through to read.
Annaliese has been a carer for five years and is now in the position of Branch Coordinator at Blackpool which employs 53 carers. We caught up and asked her about her work.
What was your reaction to winning CareLineLive’s December Star Carer Award?
I shocked. I didn’t know that I had been nominated but I think it was because of the care plan translation work I did. We took on some packages for Arabic refugees but were told that they had very little English so knew in advance that there would be a comms barrier. When I put the folder information together for them in English I realised that this would be a waste of time as they would not be read the contents. So I had a brainwave to use Google Translate to translate the pages of the care plans. I put the Arabic version on top and the English version below so that anyone helping them with translation would easily be able to understand the material.
I wanted these clients to feel welcome and be able to understand what we were doing for them in their native language rather than giving them a lot of paper work that they would not be able to understand.
I went out to meet with the clients after the plans had been sent out. There was a translator there who helped me ask about the plans and they said they had read them and also asked for social services to provide their information in Arabic too. This was later done also using Google Translate.
What aspects of being a carer do you enjoy?
Helping people to maintain their independence and stay at home for as long as they possibly can. Giving someone a reason to smile back especially when they don’t see many other people. I also really enjoy hearing about their life stories – it is so interesting to listen when everyone has such a a different story.
How does CareLineLive’s Carer Companion App help in your job?
It’s a very straight forward system that makes carers and manager’s jobs easier.
As a branch manager it is easy for us to manage the staff using it and also to manage the client. Everything is in the app that the carer needs and everything is in the management portal that we need to review. Things we need to do or renew come up on the dashboard so we don’t miss anything.
What are the challenges in your job?
When carers are off sick and we have to cover rotas at the last minute can be challenging. We are responsible for providing care for 129 people in Blackpool so it can be stressful having that responsibility and making sure that everyone is properly looked after regardless of how many carers we have available. Some have been carers for many years and others are much younger. We have a very even mix of male and female carers and thankfully since Covid availability for unsociable hours has eased.
What is the process for documenting a care plan? What parts of CareLineLive do you use for doing that?
CareLineLive incorporates forms for each client. These document things like their name, date of birth, medical conditions and needs, any communication barriers, continence, environmental risks and access issues, medication, mental health, personal care and more.
Once all the information is filled in on the front section of the care plan summary on CareLineLive it is then collated into a single pdf which is great for the carer if they lose phone signal. All the tasks are linked with the days of the week so nothing is missed. The ability to have all that in a single document is a great fallback – that’s one of the big concerns home care agencies have when going digital – what happens if the system breaks or we lose signal.
We make a pdf print out of each form to take to the client’s home but the staff will all access them digitally via the carer app or the management portal.
We also use the assessment templates. These are a separate tab on CareLineLive and are a helpful formalised way of going through necessary information gathering such as risk assessment. These are all held in one place so we can access the information really quickly when we need to whether in the office, the clients home or on the go.
How do you switch off after a hard day at work?
I like reading – murder and crime. I also like watching series on TV and spending time with friends and family.
