GNCR ambassador case study – Karen Barnes, Principal Social Worker for Adults in Adult Social Care, Durham County Council
Karen Barnes is the principal social worker for adults within Durham County Council. She also manages the Practice Development Service, with a team of qualified social workers.
She is responsible for increasing the standards and quality of social care, supervising programmes of case file audits, covering reviews, assessments, and care planning, sharing good practice, and identifying areas for improvement.
How Karen uses the GNCR
In her quality assurance role, Karen uses the Great North Care Record (GNCR) when auditing her service’s work to ensure they are cross-referencing their information in the right way and check assessments and reviews are evidence-based. She has also used GNCR when conducting a case review. If a specific concern is raised, GNCR enables her to check what information practitioners might have already known and if there was anything that might have been missed.
“When I speak with frontline staff, they regularly express how useful the GNCR is ahead of their service users’ visits. Especially when a service user is not able to communicate everything, or their family doesn’t have access to the full picture.
“Sometimes, a patient might have cognitive impairments, so having a better understanding of what is happening for that person medically, their upcoming appointments, or any significant changes in their medication is extremely valuable and allows adult social care staff to be better informed.”
Why the GNCR makes a difference?
Karen believes that the GNCR is particularly helpful in getting a complete picture of a service user’s story. In the past, accessing specific information was difficult, especially when working with older people who had dementia or adults with learning disabilities — unless a family member or carer knew them well and could fill in the gaps.
She also finds the GNCR beneficial when looking over records in hospital discharge work, as social workers can access longer-term history, including information about previous admissions. This supports a more robust assessment and helps practitioners put together better discharge plans, having a more comprehensive understanding of the patient’s needs.
“GNCR is a great tool to support our understanding of the impacts on our carers too. Sometimes, you come across family members who are providing a lot of care for someone, but they play that down. But if a practitioner is doing a joint assessment of the cared-for person as well as the carer, then they should look at both people.”
“Being able to check out both parties’ records is equally important because there could be some hidden difficulties that they are not sharing or wanting to talk about, and it’s key for us to understand them, as it might have significant impacts on carers’ mental and physical health.”
“Our Data Privacy Notice describes how we access, process and store information and includes information about GNCR and how people can opt-out should they choose”.
