Social Care Consultancy vs. Other Policies and Procedures Options – Which is the best one for you?

If you are starting a care service you’re probably wondering how care consulting can be used to get all the policies and procedures you need in place to register quickly and without too many headaches or hiccups.

Because at The Access Group we provide policies and procedures software we have inhouse experts in all things policies and procedures. They have experience working with each of the options I’ll be reviewing, and have given me the background, the pros and the cons of each.

After reading this article you should have a better understanding regarding social care consultancy and all of the information you need to make an informed, confident decision about the best method for you, to create, manage and maintain policies and procedures that keep your care service compliant, and support safe, high quality care.

Overview of the Options

There are four main options that care providers use to create, maintain and update their policies and procedures, these are:

1. Do it yourself
2. Hire a consultant
3. Use a templated subscription service
4. Use a fully digital solution

 I’ll assess each option by some key criteria including:

• Cost
• Time required
• Quality of policies and procedures
• Ease of access
• Accessibility for all
• Ease of updating
• Risks of out of date policies

Write Policies and Procedures Yourself (Option 1)

The pros

It’s free

The most attractive aspect of authoring your policies and procedures yourself is that you don’t have to pay someone else to do it for you.

They're fully bespoke

If you author the policies yourself you can be sure they are bespoke to your care service, which can be beneficial and avoid any inappropriate aspects of policies (that don't fit well with your care service)

Unfortunately that's the extent of the benefits from writing policies and procedures yourself.

The cons

Time needed to create them

The first major drawback to creating all the policies and procedures you require from scratch is the enormous amount of time involved. Although at first sight it may seem like a cheaper option, you need to consider the ‘opportunity cost’, meaning what could you be doing instead that would help you achieve your goals?

The time spent researching, drafting, checking and publishing all that documentation might be better spent preparing to recruit staff or marketing your care service or securing contacts.

You should also consider how much time might be spent and then wasted entirely, if you decide half way through to opt for options 2 or 3 instead.

Time needed to update them

In addition to the time required to create policies and procedures in the first place, they also need to be updated and adapted regularly to reflect changes. These could be changes in regulation or best practice standards. Or they could be changes in how your service is run.

You need to think not only of the time needed to make changes, but also to monitor for what and when changes are required and how to implement these changes across all your services. If they’re on paper, factor in fuel and time needed to take these to your care locations (e.g. care homes or service users’ homes).

Ease of access

How will people access the policies and procedures? where there is a greater chance that policies and procedures documents could get lost or damaged.

Risks

As with any paper documentation there is always the risk of being not put back in the right place, damaged, lost or displaced.

In addition, when you make updates to your paper based policies there is a risk that of older versions policies or procedures remaining in circulation, especially in large services, but realistically even in smaller care services too.

This can lead to staff following out of date guidance, or not having the policy or procedure they need, which could impact care quality or safety.

These risks also apply to options 2 and 3, but not to 4.

Not Accessible to all

The social care workforce has a relatively high level of people with dyslexia, who, of course, struggle with text-based documents. This means they are more difficult for those people to use and could be less effectively used.

Social care also has a fairly high proportion of people whose English skills are not great. Likewise, many service users and families may also struggle to read English, or would benefit from policies and procedures in their native tongue. Translations are of course not technically essential for compliance, but they will make policies and procedures more accessible and usable for everyone that uses them.

Incomplete policy/procedure sets

Most domiciliary care service will require over 130 separate policies, and residential care services (care homes) will require over 140.

If writing policies and procedures themselves, care services, especially new ones, can find it difficult to determine exactly which policies and procedures they need in order to be compliant with their regulator and to support staff to deliver safe, high quality care.

Not having the full range of policies is not an option. You won’t be able to register and carrying out care without them in place is against regulations.

Requires expert knowledge

Writing effective care policies and procedures requires expert knowledge, not only of how care is and should be provided, but also the regulations and legislation governing social care in your part of the UK. This extends beyond just understanding regulatory requirements, into what can often be very technical legislation that can be difficult to interpret.

From all this information you then need to select what is relevant to your specific service type and then translate what is relevant, into practical policies and procedures that ensure care is safe and high quality within your service.

This is obviously labour intensive and stressful, even for experienced authors of policies and procedures. If you lack that experience it will obviously be even more agonizing. That stress will of course be multiplied when you are either setting up and registering your service.

Trying to spin so many plates could mean one or two easily get broken. If your policies and procedures do not measure up to regulatory requirements then not only could if affect care safety and quality, but it could lead to your service failing to be registered or (if it is already operating) receiving a negative score and a requirement to make improvements from your regulator.

Best for

Only the most experienced care services, who have authored care policies and procedures previously and have the necessary time to create, update and maintain them. Or larger organisations that have a dedicated compliance team to write their policies and procedures.

Worst for

The vast majority of care providers and probably you too. Some care providers may be lured in by the chance to save some money, however most - especially small to mid-size - care providers will quickly see they have bitten off more than they can chew. This is why options 2 and 3 below are far more commonly used.

Care Consulting Firms (Option 2)

Some care providers opt to employ the services of specialist care consultants to write their policies and procedures for them.

Various terminology are used to refer to these agencies, such as social care consultancy, CQC consultant (depending where you are in the UK of course), social care consultancy, care quality compliance consultant and so on.

Some care consulting firms are small, sometimes just an individual whereas others are large with lots of personnel and varying specialisms.

The pros

Bespoke

Unlike options 3 and 4 these policies and procedures are not templated, or at least not entirely. This means they are more bespoke to your service. For certain types of care service such as more complex supported living or assisted living services, this is essential.

For most other types of care service not having fully bespoke policies and procedures simply means you may need fill in a few blanks or tweak a few templates here and there so they fit your service and how it operates properly.

However, even if bespoke is not essential, it can remove an extra bit of effort on your part and ensures a perfect fit from the get go.

High quality

Consultants will typically be former regulators themselves and experts in compliance, policies, procedures and even legislation relating to social care. They will have lots of experience in writing policies and procedures for all types of care service so you can be sure you are in safe hands.

The cons

Cost

Hiring a consultant is by far the most pricey option on our list. A full library of policies could cost thousands of pounds, with most charging per policy.

There are usually weighty additional fees if you want the consultant to update those policies once they are in place, pushing costs up even further.

Variable quality

With so many consultants out there it is possible you choose one that is not up to standard. Or at least you need to spend more time doing your due diligence to see who they have worked with, reviews or references from happy customers and so on.

With subscription services (option 3) and digital systems (option 4) there are firstly fewer providers in the market and secondly everyone is using the same sets or templates so there is much more consumer oversight

Best for

Providers with especially complex services in need of more bespoke policies and procedures and expert guidance.

Worst for

Most adult social care providers and especially those that are budget conscious. For most providers the benefits do not outweigh the cost and the lack of a regular update service could cause them problems.

Template/subscription service (Option 3)

Many care providers use a service where a company provides them with packages of templated policies and procedures that can be customized. Traditionally these would be sent on paper, increasingly they are in digital format (e.g. PDFs or Word documents) but should not be confused with a fully digital system (option 4).

The pros

High quality

Templates provided by these services (assuming they are experienced and have good reviews) will be expertly written, tested and confirmed to meet regulatory requirements. This means you can be confident that they will enable your regulatory compliance, for registration of your service and on an ongoing basis.

Regularly updated

As part of the subscription fee most companies will update the templates they provide to ensure they (and your care service as a result) are up to date and compliant with the latest regulations and best practice guidelines.

Saves time

As outlined in the section for Option 1, writing and then keeping all your policies and procedures takes a lot of time, this brings with it an ‘opportunity cost’, what could you be spending that time on instead of this?

Because a subscription service provides those initial policy templates and ongoing updates, you don’t need to suffer that opportunity cost.

Cost

Subscription services vary in how much they charge, use different their pricing models, whether ongoing updates are included and additional fees for services such as form templates.

Regardless of this variety, they will always be less expensive then hiring consultants directly (option 2). Although technically they ‘cost’ more than writing policies yourself, when you consider the hours that would be spent doing so it’s probably a sensible investment.

The cons

Ease of Access

As with options 1 and 2, having printed policies and procedures has drawbacks in terms of staff being able to access them right away, when and where they are needed. This can lead to people not using policies and procedures when they should, or simply take staff time to locate them.

Not accessible for all

Again, same as options 1 and 2, I’ve yet to see a subscription service that includes either dyslexia friendly formatting, or translation. This can impact how much, or how easily all your staff members can use your policies and procedures, which could compromise how effective they are.

Potential for out of date policies to remain in circulation

When paper based policies and procedures are updated (or even electronic documents without proper governance), there is always the possibility that you have older versions policies or procedures floating round, especially in large services, but realistically even in smaller care services too.

This can lead to staff following out of date guidance, or not having the policy or procedure they need, which could impact care quality or safety.

May require manual intervention to update

Subscription services vary. Some may simply email you the update that is required and then it is up to you to make the update to your documents yourself. This introduces a risk (if the update is missed) and does require a bit of extra time from you to make those amendments and circulate them.

Best for

Most adult social care providers can get by well with a subscription service.

Worst for

Particularly complex services, or those adult social care providers that are keen to take advantage of what digital technology has to offer and the problems with subscription services that it solves.

Full digital system (Option 4)

The newest option available to care providers, software providers are now able to deliver policies and procedures within a digital system, not just in a digital format (such as a PDF or word document), but with a range of additional functionality to make updating, accessing, monitoring use of, and maintaining governance over your policies and procedures much easier and fail proof.

The pros

Expertly written and refined

As with options 2 and 3, all policies and procedures in these digital systems are written by people with the same level of expertise, experience and knowledge as you would find in any care consultancy or subscription service.

Therefore, you can rely upon them to support your registration, or your ongoing regulatory compliance and delivery of safe, high quality care.

These policies and procedures have been refined to be as clear as possible, succinct and written in plain English, to ensure they can be easily understood and therefore, effective.

Ease of Access – Accessible anywhere, anytime

If the digital system you use has a mobile app element then it truly is a game changer. Your care staff can  access any policy or procedure they need, as soon as they need it via their mobile phone. This saves staff time and improves compliance.

It is a massive improvement on analogue, or paper based systems, where policies and procedures are not always immediately available to staff when they need them, and staff may feel obliged to ‘improvise’, or the right course of action may be delayed.

The point of policies and procedures is that they are followed. If staff do improvise they make take the incorrect course of action, perhaps even doing something that puts the people you support at risk, or at the least compromises care quality.

Accessible to all

Unlike all options above, digital systems can make policies and procedures easier to use for everyone to use, with simple tools that, for example, change the background and text colour so people with dyslexia are able to read them more easily.

Easy-Read versions of policies and procedures can also be easily added and people using the system, whether staff or service users, can easily switch to the version that is best for them.

Some of these systems also have an inbuilt language translation feature, enabling users to read policies and procedures in their native language in a click or a tap.

This can be a massive advantage in social care, where higher proportions of staff and clients may not use English as a first language and struggle with reading English 100% correctly all of the time.

Regularly updated

Digital solutions are backed up by a team of people that scan the regulatory horizon for necessary updates to policies and procedures. saving another job and ensuring no updates are missed.

Updated uniformly

With options 1 and 2 there is always the possibility that you have out of date copies of policies or procedures floating round, especially in large services, but realistically even in smaller care services too.

This is really difficult to avoid with any kind of paper documentation. But with a fully digital system there is only ever one version of a policy or procedure that people can access. The new version overwrites the old without anyone needing to spend time tracking down any errant documents.

This meaning everyone is always singing from the same hymn sheet, using the correct version and following the right guidance.  

Easy to find the policy/procedure required

Digital solutions (when designed properly of

This means less time is spent finding the right folder, flicking through page after page until you find the information you need.

Support you to easily see who needs to read or refresh on specific policies

This is useful for your own internal compliance purposes, but also creates a useful record if a regulator or other body ever questions the use of policies and procedures in your service.

Endless possibilities

Systems like this are just in their infancy. There is a great deal of scope for additional helpful features to be developed and more reporting and analytics to be added to track engagement with your policies and procedures.

We should also expect to see integrations with complimentary software that your care service might use, for example linking to care plan software, or activity management to ‘pop up’ with relevant policies to the care needs of a person, or to the task a care worker is completing, for example the medicines policy when administering a medicine, or the incident procedure when flagging up a specific incident type.

The cons

User adoption

Any change, however good it is, requires a bit of work to ensure people adapt to that change. Staff members used to paper based policies may be skeptical about your new approach, so it requires a little bit of extra work to make sure everyone understand the benefits, how the system is going to make life easier for them, and the people they care for.

Securing this buy in typically leads to enthusiasm rather than skepticism around the change you are making.

If you select a system that is easy to use (for all staff members) this shouldn’t be a problem. Most of these systems are very straightforward and simple, so even the least technologically savvy in your team should be able to benefit from them with minimal guidance.

Can be more expensive

Digital systems are much cheaper than consultants, but can be more expensive than subscription services, depending on the options chosen and the specific provider of either the system, or the service.

Best for

All care providers, although the suitability for certain, complex providers will depend on the exact sets of policies available from the system supplier.

Worst for

Those who want to continue using paper processes, or wait before adopting a digital system.

Summary - Quick Comparison

In this article I’ve compared the three most common methods of managing care policies and procedures in the UK:

1. Writing and maintaining yourself
2. Hiring a consultant
3. Subscription/templating service/templates
4. Using a fully digital solution

Here is a table summarizing our evaluation, the cell colours reflect how good or bad we feel each option performs in that category:

• Green = Strong performance
• Amber = Mixed performance, uncertain or unreliable and highly dependent on the people involved
• Red = Poor performance

Which is the best option for you?

As I hope we’ve discovered, while writing policies and procedures yourself is a viable option for some, it would be a substantial burden and potential compliance risk for most care providers. For very large organisations it may be preferential as they have in-house teams of experts so don’t need to outsource that expertise and burden to external consultants.

Consultancy services, with expertly written policy templates have been a tried and tested solution to the challenges of maintaining policies and procedures for years.

Increasingly care providers are opting for digital solutions as a superior option to using consultancy services. Some organisations offering templated policies and procedures and associated services have responded by developing their own digital counterparts, but these are typically halfway houses rather than fully digital solutions and lack many of the benefits fully digital solutions offer.

If you are moving to a digital solution, there may be some change management involved but this shouldn’t be too burdensome or difficult.

Consultancy services are still a viable solution to the challenges of managing policies and procedures in social care and many care providers will stick with this approach. If you are especially price conscious this option may be cheaper than a fully digital solution, depending on the provider of either option.

Fully digital solutions are the way forward however, as shown by the number of subscription (paper) based services that are desperately trying to catch up and provide some form of digital solution themselves. However, be aware that just putting documents online is different from a digital system, as a piece of software. Ensure if you are ready to take the step forward with a digital solution you select one that has:

• A mobile app
• Reporting and analytics to show which users have viewed which policies
• Have accessibility functionality such as translation and help for people with dyslexia

Find out more about The Access Group’s fully digital policies and procedures solution or get in touch with one of our team members, to have a chat about what your needs are and whether our solution or another may be the best fit for you.