How to choose children's home management software

Choose children's home management software by testing it against your own home's week, not a vendor's demo. Look for a system built for children's homes rather than adapted from adult care, one that keeps a child's record as one connected thread, works for the nation you are in, lets you take every record with you if you leave, and is priced so that leaving costs nothing. Then run a short trial with your own team before you sign anything.

This guide is for a registered manager or Director doing that job for the first time, or for the second time after the first choice went badly. It is written by a software company, so read it with that in mind. We have tried to make it useful whichever product you pick.

What should children's home software actually do?

Start with the work, not the feature list. Write down the five things that take your team the most time or cause the most worry, and judge every product against them. For many homes the list looks something like this:

• Recording a child's day, and handing over between shifts so nothing is lost at changeover.
• Incidents, missing episodes and safeguarding records, and the follow-ups each one should start.
• Staff files: background checks, references, right to work, supervisions, and the dates that lapse.
• The rota, timesheets and getting hours to payroll.
• The home's recurring checks — fire, water, gas, the vehicle — with the proof stored next to each.

A product that is excellent at one of these and absent on the rest leaves you running two or three systems, and the gaps between systems are where things go missing. Ask how your five connect to each other. For example: when an incident is recorded, does the follow-up appear on someone's list with a name and a date, or does somebody have to remember?

What questions should I ask a software vendor?

The best questions make the vendor show you something rather than tell you something. A few that do that:

• Show me a child's record from the day they arrived to today, not a feature tour.
• Show me what a support worker sees on their phone on a night shift.
• Show me something on your roadmap. A good answer is a screen that says it is not built yet; a weak one is a slide.
• What does the product not do? A vendor who cannot answer quickly has either not thought about it or would rather not say.
• If you show a single readiness number, what happens to it when one member of staff has no background check on file?

We keep a longer list — fifteen questions, including the ones we find uncomfortable ourselves — in our post on the questions worth asking any children's home software vendor.

What contract and pricing traps should I look out for?

Most of the cost of the wrong system is not the monthly fee. It is the year you stay locked into it after you have realised. Before you compare prices, compare the exits.

• Contract length. A one- to three-year term gives the vendor less reason to keep earning your business. Ask what it costs to leave in month three.
• Setup and onboarding fees. Ask exactly what the fee buys, and whether you could do it yourself.
• Per-user pricing. Homes have bank staff, agency staff and turnover. A price per login grows every time you recruit, and quietly discourages you from giving night staff their own sign-in.
• Modules sold separately. Ask for the price of everything you would need in year two, not only on day one.
• Price rises when a roadmap feature ships. Ask in writing whether today's price covers it.
• Fees to get your own data out. Ask whether exporting everything is a button you press or a service you pay for.

None of these is wrong in itself. A long contract can come with a lower price. But you should choose it knowing the trade, not find it in the small print.

What data protection questions should I ask?

A children's home holds some of the most sensitive records there are: children's histories, safeguarding concerns, staff health declarations. The software company processes them on your behalf, so its answers here matter as much as its features.

• Where are the servers, and which other companies does the data pass through? Ask for the list of sub-processors and how you will be told when it changes.
• How is one home's data kept apart from another's — in the application only, or in the database as well?
• Can the vendor's own staff read your records? Under what conditions, and is every look recorded?
• Can anyone, including the vendor, edit or delete the audit log?
• What happens to the records if you leave, and in what format do you get them? Ask to see an export.
• What certifications does the company hold? “None” is an honest answer from a young company. A badge with no named issuer is not.
• Is there a data processing agreement you can read before you sign?

If a vendor needs to go away and check most of these, that tells you something too.

Does the software work in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Ask this even if your home is in England, because the answer shows how the product was built. Children's homes are regulated by Ofsted in England, Care Inspectorate Wales, the Care Inspectorate in Scotland and RQIA in Northern Ireland, and the words differ. The background check is a DBS check in England and Wales, PVG in Scotland and AccessNI in Northern Ireland, and some of the documents a home keeps go by different names.

• Where do I choose my regulator, and what changes when I do?
• Does the staff file call the background check by the name my nation uses?
• Are the bank holidays on the rota the ones for my nation?
• If I open a second home in another nation, can it run under its own regulator in the same account?

A product that answers with “we are adding that” is an England product with a plan.

How should I run a software trial?

A demo shows you the best ten minutes. A trial shows you an ordinary Tuesday. Keep it short, focused and honest.

• Use made-up records. Do not put real children's details into a system until you have read its terms and data processing agreement and decided to use it.
• Pick three real jobs and do them end to end: a day's log and handover, an incident with its follow-up, and a new member of staff from first check to start date.
• Give it to a support worker as well as a manager. The person who records at 3am decides whether it gets used.
• Try it on a phone, in the part of the building with the weakest signal.
• A week later, try to find a record without help. If you cannot, nor will an inspector.
• Ask for help once, on purpose, and note how long the answer takes and whether it is right.

Then write down what you found before the sales call, so the conversation is about your notes and not their slides.

How Careframe handles this

Careframe is built only for UK children's homes, with the regulator chosen when the home is set up. It is priced per home per month by number of beds, from £129 ex VAT, with no contract, no setup fee and cancel any time, and it is free until your home is registered. Our servers are in the EU (Frankfurt), we hold no certifications, and a Director can download everything the company holds from Home settings at any time.

Careframe organises and evidences the work a children's home already does. Nothing here is legal or regulatory advice, and nothing here is a statement of what your regulator requires of you — for that, go to your regulator.