ShareCare Caresite

The Netherlands

2007

The main Caresite aim is providing a useful tool for care coordination among (family) carers group.

The initiative born from the objective of giving an opportunity of sharing care tasks, overcoming relational and communicational problems among carers, as it can be hard to ask for help and sometimes even harder to say no.

 Care Recipients
 Informal carers
 Paid assistants
 Formal carers

Not available

 Independent Living
 Information and learning for carers
 Personal Support and Social Integration for carer
 Care coordination

Formal and informal carers can open Caresite if needs help or attention, because it makes it easy to involve more people in the caring tasks.

For example friends and family can stay up to date and help and with a Caresite, the carer simply invite people to read and share news and view tasks added to the calendar. All members can then subscribe to a task with just one click. This way, everyone can decide for himself what he or she can do. This way, everyone stays up to date, everyone can help and no one feels left out. A video explains the CareSite with a fictional story. (There is a Dutch version with English sub-titles. An English spoken version is on its way).

The service contains many sub-groups of people belonging to the same group for sharing the care tasks around the same person.

Personal computer, tablet or smart-phone and Internet connection are needed.

Both public and private

Public service funding: Government, Regional, Local Authorities, non-profit public entities

Local Authorities and hospital fund the service for the first 30 days of use.

Private out of pocket: users pay the service by themselves

Users who are not inhabitants or clients of one of the ShareCare partners pay the service by themselves, after the first 30 days of free use.

ShareCare’s vision is for people to relearn in the coming years what it means to care for one another. Wanting to do this is the current trend, and market parties like ShareCare are responding accordingly. The provider develop products and services to facilitate these groups’ brought together for a reason – to spend time together and to care for one another. ShareCare forms communities by designing the form, showing the way and providing the method, by support the technique and giving helpdesk services.

Caresite is available for free for the first 30 days. For inhabitants and clients of one of ShareCare partners, the Caresite is completely free to use. For other users it costs € 65 for a year or € 39 for 4 months (after the 30-day free trial).

The initiative is run by ShareCare a young company which appears effective in improving its services in the long term. Change of the service will concern the development of new pages of the website which are still under construction. The business model has already proven sustainable.

€ 50,000 - 500,000

€ More than 500,000

200.000 € for the set up.

 Authorities
 Private Care Sector
 Health and Social Care Systems
 Third Sector
 Private Companies

Not available

Not involved

 Informal Carers
 Health Professionals
 Social Care Professionals
 Privately-Hired Care Assistants (inc. Migrant Care Workers)
 Volunteers

The service is based on the free and voluntary actions of carers who decide to open a virtual shared calendar for the care management and administer it for coordinating the related group of persons.

The only professionals involved are those from the informal care sector who are invited to indicate their availability on the calendar when it is requested by the administrator carer. Anyway, they do not receive any payment for participating in the virtual calendar.

Technical professionals administer the whole platform and service.

Not involved

10,001 - 50,000

More than 25.000 users

Used information and communication channels: internet, mail, help desk.

The service could benefit :

- Informal carers, as it help them find additional support, reconcile care and work and improve their social life and health. Furthermore, it avoids added costs for carers, by helping them save money for paid carers sometimes.

- Paid assistants, as it provide an additional chance of matching demand and offer of care services.

- Elderly people, as they can be better cared for by a competent and well informed and prepared carer.

Other benefits could be:

1. the acceptability of the ICT, as carers can appreciate how much the use of technologies can easier the care management in the everyday life and can be stimulated to improve their digital skills
2. easier and quicker available information, support and advice in a short time in order to enjoy also some relief from the caring tasks.

(ShareCare, 2014)

The service could benefit:

- Private organisations that provide care, as it helps, employ people, save costs and optimize resources.

- Companies and labour market, as it helps the informal carer reconcile paid work and caring tasks

(ShareCare, 2014)

Benefits of this service on public authorities, NHS and social care services: the service can probably help to save the costs of home caring and hospitalisation It will give carers more time to concentrate on carrying having some problems solved through the Internet. So the service helps to optimise financial and human resources.

(ShareCare, 2014)

Strengths

1. This is a very effective and user friendly service. There is also an on line Manual on how to open a Caresite.
2. ShareCare, the Caresite provider, is an organization well integrated in the health and social care network.
3. The service is a very simple tool but also very innovative and opens great opportunities.

Weaknesses

1. Neither the Manual nor the Term of Use are translated into English.
2. No mention about any further planned developments for the next future in personal communication nor in the website (Dutch and English pages), so it is no possible to judge the initiative scalability and transferability in depth.
3. The service does not formally involve volunteers associations who can be a resources for improving care management quality and efficacy.
4. The lack of an independent impact assessment: the effects of the service were evaluated by the ShareCare company and a possible conflict of interests has to be taken into account.

Opportunities

1. As ShareCare is part of a larger health and social care network, Caresite has many opportunities for applying good practices of integrated care, involving health and social organisations directly through Caresite.
2. The service is web-based and, for this reason, it could have no limits in terms of geographical coverage, in particular if the English version will be complete in a next future.

Threats

1. The use of the service depends on family members digital skills and this can exclude all persons who would like to participate in the caring tasks but who are not able to use pc and internet.
2. A challenge related to the previous point could be organising trainings for carers interested in learning this tool.

Although the lack of a plan of development, the initiative could be able to be developed on larger scale levels and transferred in different contexts and countries, as it does not require particular devices and installation, it is web-based and accessible worldwide and, finally, the site is also available in English, even if important parts are missing , and this will increase its geographical coverage and allow to address new target user groups

References:

ShareCare, Report 2014, available at http://sharecare.nl/site/?page_id=1649, after registration (only in Dutch).

Publications

www.zorgsite.nl/en/

E-mail: helpdesk@sharecare.nl

Telephone: 0031 76 7113887.

Simac Business Solutions BV
De Run 1101
5503LB VELDHOVEN, Nederland
Postbus 340
5500AH VELDHOVEN

tel. 040 2582944