Friends & Family Portal 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

The Friends and Family portal is a feature in OnCare that gives the relatives, friends, or other designated contacts of your clients a window into the care being delivered. Through the portal, these contacts can see when visits are scheduled, whether visits have been completed, who delivered the care, and what was done during each visit. They can also leave feedback and reviews after each visit.

The portal is accessed through a web app, not the mobile app. Friends and family members log in via the OnCare website using their own account credentials. The mobile app is exclusively for care workers. This is an important distinction to communicate to families when setting them up, so they know to use their web browser rather than downloading the app.

This feature supports transparency and trust between your agency and the people involved in your clients' care. It also demonstrates to CQC inspectors that your agency actively involves families and other relevant parties in the care process and provides them with visibility into the service being delivered.

Families and other contacts are often the most anxious stakeholders in a care arrangement. They want to know that their loved one is being looked after properly, that visits are happening on time, and that the care plan is being followed. Without a portal like this, families rely on phone calls to the office, updates from the client themselves (who may not always remember or communicate clearly), or waiting until something goes wrong before they find out.

The Friends and Family portal solves this by giving contacts direct visibility. They can check at any point whether a visit happened, how long the care worker was there, what tasks were completed, and whether any notes were left. This reduces the volume of incoming calls to your office from concerned family members, because the information they are looking for is already available to them.

From a CQC perspective, the portal is evidence that your agency promotes transparency and actively involves families in the care process. Inspectors look favourably on agencies that can show they keep families informed and give them tools to provide feedback on the care being delivered.

Once logged in to the web app, friends and family contacts can see the following information about their linked client. Everything is in view mode only, so they cannot edit or change anything.

Past visits. They can see all completed visits, including which care worker attended, the date and time of the visit, how long the visit lasted, and what tasks were completed during the visit.

Upcoming visits. They can see the next two weeks of scheduled visits, including which care worker is allocated and the planned time for each visit. This gives families visibility into who is coming and when.

Care worker details. They can see basic information about the care workers who are delivering care to their linked client.

Visit notes. Any notes left by the care worker during a visit are visible to family contacts through the portal, giving them additional context about how the visit went.

Communication log. The portal includes access to the communication log, which contains text messages, notifications when a care worker checks in to a visit, and a summary of the visit once it is completed. This keeps family members informed in near real-time about what is happening with their loved one's care.

Feedback and reviews. After each visit, family contacts can leave a review and provide feedback. Reviews are rated on a scale of 1 to 10 and include written comments. These reviews appear inside the visit report and are visible to office staff on the dashboard, making it easy to monitor satisfaction and address any concerns.

Friends and family contacts can choose to turn on notifications so they are alerted when visits happen and when new information is available. Notifications can be received by email or by SMS to their phone number. This means that even if a family member does not log in to the web app regularly, they can still stay informed about their loved one's care through automatic updates.

To give someone access to the Friends and Family portal, go to the Summary page of the client's profile. You will see a Friends and Family section on this page. Click Add to create a new contact. You will need to enter the following details:

Once you have entered these details, click to send the invite. The contact will receive an email with instructions to set up their account and log in to the web app.

You can invite anyone who is involved in the client's care or who needs visibility into the care being delivered. This is not limited to family members. You can invite a friend, a doctor, a support worker, an occupational therapist, or anyone else who has a legitimate reason to view the client's care information.

You can add multiple contacts for a single client. For example, a client might have a daughter and a son who both want to stay informed, or a family member and a social worker who both need access. Each contact gets their own login and can only see information about the client they are linked to.

Before adding friends and family contacts, make sure the client's profile is fully set up with all their details. The client should have their personal information, care plan, and scheduled visits in place before you invite anyone to view their care through the portal. If a client profile is incomplete or has no visits scheduled, there will be nothing meaningful for the family contact to see.

For the portal to be useful, care workers must be clocking in and out of visits and completing tasks through the app. If care workers are not using the app to record visits, there will be nothing for families to see in the portal. If you want families to see medication records, eMAR must be set up and in use for the client. If you want families to see task completion details, tasks must be configured and assigned to visits.

Your agency should also have a clear internal policy about what information families can access and how to handle any concerns or complaints that come through the portal's review feature.

The Friends and Family portal is a viewing and feedback tool only. Contacts who access the portal cannot make changes to the care schedule, edit visit reports, contact care workers directly through the portal, request additional visits or changes to the care plan, or access any billing or financial information.

If a family member or other contact wants to make changes to the care arrangement, they need to contact your office directly. The portal is designed for transparency and information sharing, not for managing or modifying care delivery.

The portal demonstrates CQC compliance by showing that your agency involves families and promotes transparency in care delivery.