Why Careframe will not give you a readiness score

There is a version of this product with a big number on the front page. We built it — a ring, a percentage, green at the top. It looked excellent. It is not in the product any more, and this is why.

A score averages things that do not average

A home can be in good order on almost everything and have one member of staff with no background check on file. Averaged, that is ninety-something per cent and a reassuring colour. In reality it is the one thing you would want somebody to walk into your office about.

Inspection does not work by averaging either. Some things are limiting: get them wrong and it does not matter what else is right. A number that lets a serious gap be outvoted by a dozen trivial ones is not summarising your home, it is obscuring it.

A score invites the wrong question

The moment a number exists, the work bends towards raising it. The cheap items get closed because they move the figure, and the expensive one sits there because it is worth the same single point. We would rather the question in the morning meeting be “what is the worst thing open” than “what gets us to ninety-five”.

A score reads as a prediction, whatever the caption

This is the one that decided it. Put a percentage against a regulator's judgement heading and it reads as a prediction of that judgement, no matter what the small print says. Vendors who do this end up writing disclaimers explaining that their score does not guarantee a rating — which is an admission that the number is being read as one.

We are not in a position to predict an inspection outcome. Nobody selling software is. A tool that implies otherwise is selling a feeling, and the feeling is wrong exactly when it matters.

What we show instead

• A count of open gaps — “seven gaps to close” — which goes down when you close one and not before.
• Twelve areas, each either clear or not, so you can see where the problem is rather than how big the average is.
• Every gap with a named owner, how long it has been open, and a link straight to the record it is about.
• A trend from a nightly snapshot, so you can say “seven, down from eleven on the first” — the honest version of a number that goes up.

And no colour on a judgement heading. Each area quietly says which heading your regulator would look at it under, in grey. Colouring it would be us grading your home, which is not our job.

When we described the scoring idea to a registered manager, the response came back before we had finished the sentence: no score, no predicted grade.

If you are comparing tools, this is a fair question to put to any of them: what does your number mean, and what happens to it when one member of staff has no check on file? The answer tells you whether it was designed to help you or to demo well.

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.