Fifteen questions worth asking any children's home software vendor

A demo is a curated tour of the parts that work. That is not dishonest — everyone does it, including us — but it means the questions are on you. These are the ones we would ask, and we have included the ones we would rather you did not ask us, because a list that only we pass is not worth reading.

About the product

• Was this built for children's homes, or adapted from adult social care? Ask them to show you something that only makes sense in a children's home.
• Which parts are built and which are on a roadmap? Ask to see the roadmap parts in the product — a good answer is a page that says “coming soon”; a bad one is a slide.
• Does it work in all four UK nations, or is it an England product? Ask what changes if the home is in Scotland.
• What does a support worker see on their phone at 3am? Not the manager's dashboard — the actual shift view.
• Show me a child's record from admission to discharge, not a feature tour.

About the claims

• If they show a readiness score, ask what it means and what it does when one member of staff has no background check.
• If they say “compliant” or “inspection-approved”, ask who approved it. No regulator approves software.
• Ask what the product does NOT do. A vendor who cannot answer this quickly has not thought about it, or is not going to tell you.

About the data

• How is one home's data kept separate from another's — in the application, or in the database? Ask them to explain it; the answer's specificity is the signal.
• Can an audit record be edited or deleted, by anyone, including them?
• Where does the data physically live, and which company holds it?
• What happens to our records if we leave? Ask for the export format, and ask to see one.
• What certifications do you hold? “None” is an acceptable answer from a young company. A badge they cannot name the issuer of is not.

About the money

• Is there a contract length, a setup fee, or a minimum? Ask what it costs to leave in month three.
• What happens to the price when a feature currently on the roadmap ships?

How we answer these

Briefly, so you can hold us to it. Careframe is built only for children's homes and only for the UK, with the regulator chosen at set-up. Running the home and caring for the child are built; training is not, and the product says so on the door. We show gaps, never a score and never a predicted grade. Homes are separated by row-level security in the database, not only in the application. The audit log cannot be edited by anyone, us included. We hold no certifications and we are not going to pretend otherwise. There is no contract, no setup fee, and it is free until you are registered.

If any of that turns out not to be true, that is a fair thing to hold against us.

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.