A new year brings a new beginning; see new places, try new things, meet new people, and most importantly, set new goals for 2025. However, the goals must first be planned and set to achieve our goals and desired outcomes. Collaborating with service users to help them achieve their goals is an incredibly rewarding experience for both the individuals and the care teams supporting them. A well-structured goal-setting process empowers individuals, ensures alignment with regulatory frameworks, and helps continuous improvement to provide care. Here, we share how to learn about effective strategies for setting annual goals for people receiving service within Social Care and how technology can improve this care planning process, making it more streamlined, impactful, and efficient.
Decide What are Your Goals? Can it be too Large or too Small?
The best thing about goals is that people can choose to set goals themselves. Each person is different, so different people can strive towards achieving different goals. It means one goal will not suit everyone or it will be of benefit to everyone. No one can decide for you that any goal is too ambitious or uninspired. People set goals for themselves that are always related to their personality, ambitions, and abilities.
At the beginning of the year, most people set their goals for the upcoming year. These are often in the form of New Year’s Resolutions. They feel more ambitious and fresh about starting their year differently. And they want to see themselves at the desired level by the end of the year. How many people do you know who say they will hit the gym, take up running, stop smoking, or improve their fitness each and every year?
Setting Goals and Outcomes within Social Care
Many goals are set to have the same desired outcome: improving your health, well-being, and quality of life. It is similar to setting goals and achieving outcomes for supporting people who receive care and support services within the Social Care homes. When discussing goals and imagining their outcomes for Social Care homes, remember that setting goals is relative to people and their lives receiving support and care. The goal has to be realistic so it can be achievable.
Ambition is great, but overambition can become a demotivating factor. If you are not careful when setting goals, ambition makes you feel depressed. Somehow, you feel deflated, disappointed, and even disappointed if you do not achieve the outcomes of the goals you set to achieve. Setting realistic goals you want to achieve gives you a better and fairer chance of obtaining the outcomes you want. It also gives you a greater motivation and belief to go on and achieve further aspirations in the future.
What is the Importance of Setting Goals in Social Care?
The importance of setting goals is often overlooked. However, goal setting is a cornerstone of truly person-centred care. It helps care providers identify and achieve goals by working with service users. Social Care Providers and their services are often reviewed by regulatory bodies, such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England. Regular review and tracking of progress can help achieve goals and outcomes and tailor services to individual needs.
Regular review lets you evaluate whether the desired outcome is overly ambitious. It helps you to recognise if and when it is time to switch to a more appropriate and attainable outcome. This will remove the risk of disappointment or upset when the outcome is not achieved or unrealistic. It also helps you recognise if another method can be used for pursuing those goals and may help you achieve those desired outcomes. Failure to review progress against your goals will leave you wondering whether your actions are working and positively impacting your life.
Why are Outcomes Important to Supported People in Social Care?
Why do we set our goals? Why are we always so keen to create challenges for ourselves? The answer is simple: we always want to improve and do better. We want to live better lives. This same logic works for person-centred care planning outcomes. Care Providers provide support and care to those people who want to live better and more independent lives.
Achieving a sense of accomplishment is massively important to people who receive support and care within Social Care homes. As they feel the loss of control or independence when entering care homes. Providing support and care to those people helps them achieve a sense of accomplishment, and their self-confidence will grow alongside their self-esteem. These will encourage them to target more outcomes for themselves and help them to develop their skills and independence.
A person-centred approach within Social Care aims to help people take ownership of their progress. It ditches the outdated time and task approach and improves decision-making by providing clear objectives. A more person-centred approach supports people and their lives at the centre of care planning. This will help nurture development and their own independence with personal satisfaction.
How Technology Helps Setting Annual Goals?
Modern technology has revolutionised how social care providers set, track, and manage goals for service users. Digital care platforms enable caregivers to document service users’ goals in real time. They help to set SMART goals and update progress. It makes monitoring of service users’ goals easy. You can use tools like visual progress charts and milestone reminders to track the progress.
Digital systems make communication easy and fast among caregivers, service users, and family members. They can instantly share updates and feedback, ensuring everyone stays informed and aligned. It also helps meet regulatory standards for the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Digital systems can help care providers measure outcomes, identify trends, and allocate resources. This will help improve care quality and the lives of the service users.
How to Overcome Challenges in Setting Annual Goals?
Like every other process, there may be challenges to setting or achieving annual goals. Start by training your staff to use digital tools. Talk about how this can help them and make their work easy. Care staff often face heavy workloads. Allocating dedicated time for goal setting and reviews
can help to cope with this issue. Both staff and service users may prefer familiar methods and resist the change. Change management strategies can ease the transition to new systems.