A study in 2021 by Wakefield Research and Elastic found that more than 50% of office workers spend more time searching for files than on work. Using Word, Excel, and PDF files to store important information – risk assessments, care plans, placement records, trackers and many more – is both time consuming and dangerous, in terms of storing and accessing the most sensitive information.
The transition to digital records is challenging but CHARMS can make it easier – and your sensitive information is made safe. We make sure that all your data is transferred as part of our implementation process, free of charge.
You can enter and access referrals, placements, daily records, incidents and management information quickly and easily. And, if you need help, you can call our helpline (0161 237 1872) and get straight through to one of our experienced, non-technical telephone support team. Their sole purpose is resolving your queries and they do that without fuss and with care and attention to your needs.
A referral takes seconds to enter and home managers can see it straightaway and digitally sign to show that they have. The dialogue about a potential match for the child/young person is all done in CHARMS.
The care plan/CPR, health record and other electronic paperwork is all uploaded to the case record and care staff have immediate access to what they need as soon as the placement is made.
The voice to text tool has proved to be one of CHARMS most popular features and care staff can speak their notes straight in to CHARMS, saving time and ensuring that records are updated as quickly as possible.
CHARMS is responsive which means that it works on any internet ready device including smartphones and tablets. So, the care staff can speak in to their mobile phone, saving them the need to carry laptops around.
What’s OMG. It’s the unique CHARMS tool (and it stands for Online Mail Grabber) which allows the user, maybe the senior or registered manager, to view their email, in CHARMS, and save them straight to the child/young person case file. We did the maths – for every email with a file attachment it takes about 3 minutes to: open the email, one at a time; click the Forward button; highlight the text to be saved; press Ctrl C; download the attachment and save it to a folder on your computer/tablet/phone; create a case note in your database system (and that can be several steps in some systems); paste the email contents in; and then finally browse and upload the file attachment that you saved to your local device.
If you have received 50 emails in one week and each takes 3 minutes to save in the old-fashioned way, and add them to the case file, that amounts to 2 and a half hours every week. With OMG you can select multiple emails – say relating to one child/young person – locate the case record a click save. In a matter of seconds OMG has saved all the selected emails and attachments to CHARMS. Or as our 50,000 or so users say, “you just OMG it”.
Establishment management is also looked after by CHARMS, as are staff records and rotas.
Record and upload the latest buildings insurance paperwork; record the fire alarm test; cleaning checklist; health and safety check; Reg 44 inspection; well, everything, all in one simple, easy to use “Progress” screen.
View current placements – and quickly navigate to an individual child/young person on the click of a button – and the whole history of placements in that home. Start/end a placement in seconds.
Show details of the home and services offered, placement criteria and of course contact information.
The CHARMS Staffing system (and volunteers/third parties) is a complete personnel management. It manages the whole process from job application all the way through interview, onboarding and ongoing support and training. Staff can apply for holidays, securely, and the relevant manager/senior can approve the requests, with alerts by email to do so. The Bradford Factor is built in to allow personnel staff to support staff with sickness records of concern.
A fully featured rota system means that all aspects of managing the delivery of care are available in CHARMS.
A powerful staff training system allows all training bookings, confirmation, delegate lists, certificates, cancellations, non-attendance, waiting lists to be managed in one place. Staff can see in their own account what training they are booked on and have attended.
All user training, using Teams or on site, is free of charge, including new starter training. Many CHARMS customers include our free training session on Teams in the induction process for new starters.
If the CHARMS suite of reports doesn’t have exactly what you need, just ask your CHARMS account manager and they will send a request to our developers who will produce the report you need, free of charge.
