Clearing the carer assessment backlog at Sefton Carers Centre

Social care is about people, but too often it’s dominated by paperwork. 

At Sefton Carers Centre, carer assessors were spending nearly as long writing up conversations as they were having them.

With around 12,000 carers in their community, demand was rising, and carer assessment requests were arriving faster than the team could process them. This created a growing backlog and increasing pressure on staff. 

The team decided to trial Notes to reduce admin and speed up the carer assessment process, so they could spend more time supporting carers.  

The challenge

Admin was taking over the day 

Nearly half of the working day was spent recording and updating case notes, leaving team members balancing essential administrative tasks with supporting carers.

Demand for assessments was increasing

As demand for carer assessments grew, the team needed to find ways to complete assessments more efficiently while continuing to provide timely support for carers.

Extra pressure from the regulator 

With the Care Quality Commission’s continuous monitoring, records needed to be kept up to date at all times, making timely and accurate documentation a key priority for the team.

The approach

Sefton Carers Centre initially introduced Notes to support carer assessors with documenting carer assessments.

Staff used Notes to record meetings and automatically generate structured summaries that could be used for case notes and documentation. 

Following the successful pilot, Sefton Carers Centre and Beam continued refining how the tool was used within the service, adapting it to fit the team’s workflows and assessment processes.

The impact 

6.5 hours back every week 

Admin reduced by 44%, giving each team member around 6.5 hours back every week. That time was used to follow up properly, check in with carers, and provide the emotional support they needed. 

As one team member put it:

“It has enabled us to complete more assessments and has allowed me to spend more time providing emotional support and follow up support to carers.”

The assessment backlog was cleared 

Writing up an assessment used to take around three hours. With Notes, that dropped to 1.4 hours! 

Reducing the time spent on documentation helped the team process assessments more efficiently and clear the backlog. It also made it easier for other teams to step in and support the assessment process when needed.

When the Young Carers team supported the service, they were able to process 45 cases in a single day.

More presence in conversations 

Without needing to type during meetings, carer assessors could focus fully on the person in front of them, and conversation quality improved, scoring 8.7/10.

Clearer notes 

Documentation quality improved too. Practitioners rated Notes 8.8/10 for quality. The summaries were clearer, more detailed, and consistent.

As one carer assessor said:

“The detail is much better and more of a true reflection of the conversation than when I take notes.”

60% found their role more enjoyable 

As the pressure of admin eased, stress levels dropped. Carer assessors felt more in control of their workload, and 60% said they enjoyed their role more.

“Notes has really supported the team during a stressful period and a high number of assessment requests. It is a really useful tool that allows us to focus more on supporting a carer emotionally rather than spending so much time on admin work.”

Continuous development

Following the initial rollout, Sefton Carers Centre has continued to build on the partnership with Beam.

Now in the second year of working together, the team has moved beyond using Notes for documentation. Reports are now used to simplify complex compliance tasks, with the document summarisation feature supporting monthly reporting to commissioners by turning raw assessment data into clear, anonymised insights in a fraction of the time.

They have also adopted Talk, where two custom agents handle routine queries such as payroll and out-of-office requests, freeing staff to focus on higher-value work.

By continuing to refine how these tools are used, Sefton Carers Centre is building on the impact of the initial pilot, helping staff spend less time on admin and more time supporting carers.

Meet rising demand with the team you already have 

See Notes in action and discover how much time your team could get back.