Leadership
Neil Eastwood, Founder and CEO of the King’s Award-winning Care Friends. Credit: Care Friends
Published: May 12, 2023 | Updated: 10th May 2023
Among its fans, the Care Friends app can count numerous care providers across Hampshire and the UK, as well as a royal commendation in the form of the King’s Award for Innovation.
The Care Friends app helps numerous care providers across Hampshire and the UK Credit: Care Friends
Neil Eastwood, Founder and CEO, talked about how they started and how it’s growing: “I was born in Portsmouth, and went to school in Petersfield. My father was the vicar of Cowplain, near Waterlooville and he wanted his kids to get involved and help out. My first experience of social care involved helping the older members of congregation, walking their dogs, gardening, that sort of thing”.
“Care Friends came about, in part, because of those Hampshire beginnings but also when I returned to social care, taking an interim directorship at the UK’s largest homecare provider in 2009.”
On joining, Neil was shocked to find their annual staff turnover rate had reached 97%. And he knew he had to do something.
“It was a disaster for those receiving care in terms of continuity, as relationships and trust couldn’t be built as staff kept changing. I found very little information on how to address this issue – who makes a good care worker, who stays in a role and why.”
“I decided to take it upon myself to discover how to improve care worker retention, travelling around the world looking at other markets for practical ideas in the field that were making a difference.
“One of the ideas that come up time and time again, was that referrals from existing workers, while a small source of new employees, had a much higher conversion rate from application to employee than those from internet job boards. Not only was the conversion rate higher, but the retention rate was also much better.”
Saving Social Care by Neil Eastwood
Neil decided to write a book of practical help and advice to care employers on who to look for as their next frontline care employee, where to find them, how to screen them and the best ways to keep them. Saving Social Care is now printing second editions as the first 10,000 copies are sold out.
“In the 1990’s, I started a business in Singapore managing frequent flyer programmes for airlines in the region and I quickly saw that earning points can drive behaviour – people will do a lot to collect more points! Over twenty years later I used that learning for the app: maybe we could use points to incentivise care workers to refer their friends.”
In 2018 the Care Friends prototype was launched with Melody Care, a care provider with over 100 professional carers and four branches across Surrey and Hampshire. Success there led to regional pilots in Cornwall in 2019 and an official launch nationally in June 2020.
Neil wasn’t satisfied with just increasing recruitment via the app: “We also wanted to grow workforce capacity locally. This means attracting those who are new to a paid care role, not just moving existing care workers from one care home to another. We added a feature where users can gain extra points for recruiting someone NOT already a care worker in, for example, Hampshire.
“Everyone benefits when the local social care workforce capacity grows. In this case, it means an extra bonus to the referring care worker as a thank you.
“All local authorities, including Hampshire County Council, will be seeing an increasing demand for care, coming out of Covid. Not just with long Covid but also an increase in mental health issues and unpaid carers struggling to support loved ones. So, not only do we have a supply problem trying to recruit care staff, we also have demand problem, because unmet needs are increasing.”
Hampshire in particular has almost 1,000 registered care businesses and Neil expects all of them will be struggling to find enough care workers: “Your choices as a care provider are keep doing the same things as you have been doing – for example, posting on job boards, advertising on social media or, post-Brexit, sponsoring foreign workers. The only meaningful untapped market left is to enlist your workforce as recruiters in the local community via employee referrals.
“Nationally care worker vacancies have passed 165,000, and Hampshire needs to find over 6,000 more workers in the next two years – an increase of 20% on the current workforce estimate of 31,000. This is against a backdrop of staff turnover rates reaching 40% a year.
“Employers using the Care Friends app are reporting conversion ratios from application to hire of as low as 5:1, where from job boards typically, this would be as many as 80 applicants to convert to one care worker.”
Employers using the Care Friends app see the first 90 day retention rates improve too. And it is that probation period where most staff loss happens, as new starters decide care isn’t for them. The licence fee for Care Friends comes from the providers themselves and some local authorities.
Neil talks about winning the 2023 King’s Award for Enterprise for Innovation: “This award is the UK’s most prestigious business award.
“I am particularly pleased that it’s awarded for the commercial success of an innovation, not simply for a good idea. We’re really delighted to win, not least because the social care sector is not known for early adoption of technology or innovation.
“I hope that winning the King’s Award will encourage care providers to adopt more technology, like ours, in the workplace and reap the rewards.”
While most of the Care Friends focus has been in the UK, they have also launched in Australia, where similar results are being reported. Neil touches on the words of Bernard Salt, Australian author and demographer, as he reflects on the changing role of apps in the care sector workforce. Noting that the healthcare apps that aimed to stop the spread of the pandemic have introduced the idea of using and benefiting from this technology.
Going forward Care Friends has just been approved by NHS England for use in hospitals and Neil hopes to be helping the NHS address workforce pressures in Hampshire, and more widely, alongside a growing number of employers in social care.
