The challenge
Behind the free phone line, the How to Find a Care Home team manages placements, families and care homes every day, across enquiries, assessments, shortlists, hospital bridging work and the move itself. That work has outgrown the tools it runs on, and the service asked us to design a system built around the way its advisors actually operate.
The approach
We started from the journey rather than the database: what happens from the first call to a settled move, who touches each step, and what an advisor needs to see at nine in the morning. That gave us a design system for the service, and click-through kits for the placement CRM, a family app and two portals, all built on invented records so nothing about a real family is ever in a design file.
What it does
- A journey board that shows every placement where it is, from new enquiry to moved in.
- Client records with the family, the care needs and the history of every conversation in one place.
- Care home records with ratings, bed availability and the details advisors check before recommending a home.
- The hospital bridging work the service does, with the people who need attention first at the top.
- A today view for each advisor: tasks due, new enquiries and the calls to make.
The details
The system shares its design language with the public website so a family who moves from the site to the family app recognises where they are. The screens shown here are from the prototypes, on invented people and homes.
