At the moment, it’s kind of half remote and half face to face. I think they are going to keep the remote side because it’s cheaper but it’s not all bad to be honest. There are advantages to it. Our reach is lot more, and we can do a lot more with the money available. When it was all face to face, we just couldn’t get the work done. It was impossible.
Now it’s remote, we are doing much better with covering the workload. I mean one of our contracts covers Hampshire, Dorset and bits of Surrey. When we were doing that face to face it was impossible to cover because of the travel times.
Although I am worried that this may lead to budget cuts it has worked the other way. We have had contracts renewed. When I say we I mean Outcome Homes who I have been hooked up with for a while. You can definitely do more with remote care. Look, we have always had the phone calls but the bulk of it was face to face.
The shift to providing remote care where needed has meant we can just get far much more done. There are many vulnerable people who have a fear of meeting new people and going out and remote care works for them too. We can’t just dismiss it out of hand.
For me face to face care and remote care are designed to work together and they work together if they are done not primarily to save money. The prime motivation has to be the provision of better care. Look, face to face care is still the better option for most people but the use of remote care makes us more efficient.