Do you want staff to do a report on their day with your family member but not quite sure what to ask staff to report on?
Before you start on designing your shift report consider the following:
- Only report on what is important to and for your family member. I’m not sure I’d like someone reporting on my every move would you?
- Make the report easy and quick to fill in – asking staff to write up open text reports is time consuming. If you can, give them tick boxes.
- Capture the data in a way that can then be queried for patterns to inform decisions. For example capturing times when challenging behaviour occurs and seeing if it might be related to anything they ate, or the activity they were doing and so on.
- Paper forms don’t easily enable this – use an online tool that can be used by supports on their phone will allow you to sort, filter, add up things and so on.
Here are some things to think about that you might like to include.
The report can serve as a reminder checklist for staff
So a question you might like to include in your shift report might be has your family member been supported to do all the tasks in their daily morning routine? You could include a checklist such as:
Examples might be
- Showered
- Cleaned teeth
- Shaved
- Breakfast
- Resperidone – 0.2mg with breakfast
- Cat fed
You could also include a checklist of things that are only done on certain days. For example:
- Trim fingernails and toenails- Wednesdays
- Put washing on – Tuesdays and Fridays
- Washed hair – Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Record if any ad hoc medications were given
- Medication type
- Dosage
- Date
- Time
- Who administered it
- Why
Capture progress on learning
Perhaps your family member is learning to do a particular task and you want to track their progress.
For example using the washing machine
Opened door
- independently
- gestural prompt
- physical prompt
- verbal prompt
Put washing in machine
- independently
- gestural prompt
- physical prompt
- verbal prompt
Shut door
- independently
- gestural prompt
- physical prompt
- verbal prompt
Put in washing powder in
- independently
- gestural prompt
- physical prompt
- verbal prompt
Turn on
- independently
- gestural prompt
- physical prompt
- verbal prompt
Monitor Health
For health reasons you may need to record what and how much your family member has drunk or eaten.
Breakfast
Amount of food
- 1/2 cup
- 1 cup
- 1.5 cups
- 2 cups
Type of food
- Weetbix
- Toast
- Porridge
- Scrambled eggs
Your family member may be prone to constipation so you may like to monitor their poop so you can take appropriate action and prevent any constipation bouts. You could use the Bristol Stool chart to record the poop.
Capture your family members emotional well being
Your family member may be prone to bouts of challenging behaviour or changes in mood. Capturing this may help you to put prevention and management strategies in place and monitor if they are working or not.
How was your family member behaving today?
- Calm
- Focussed
- Headbanging
- Shouting
- Kicking
Capture any issues that need to be discussed as a team and resolved
Ask the team member to report any issues they experienced and they can be reviewed in team meetings and resolved.
For example the hoist strap is worn and needs replacing
Capture social interactions
To make sure your family member is meeting a goal around building friendships you can capture who they met, where they met and what activities they did together.
Capture if any therapy practices were implemented
Perhaps your family member has a therapist that has recommended some therapeutic activities. You can include these in your shift report as a reminder to staff to do them.
How much sleep
If your family member has trouble sleeping and you are implementing a plan to help them sleep better you can capture the hours of sleep to monitor if the plan is working or not.
Track how the Support Worker rated their day
You can track how the support worker rated their day. Support work can be challenging so keeping an eye on how they are feeling can help you jump in and support them.
Build your shift report in Podio
Podio is an online tool that also comes as a phone app that you can use to custom build a shift report.
Here’s a video on how you can use it to build a shift report.
Get a custom built, all-in-one toolkit that organises all that good life building work along with training in how to use it and how to help your staff to embed it in their daily work
