In Wrocław, more than 600 municipal carers use Good Support, and over 1.4 million hours of care have been managed through the system. This shows how a digital solution can support the organisation and delivery of social services on a large scale.
Across Europe, municipalities are asked to deliver more care at home with limited staff, budgets and administrative capacity. Social economy organisations often deliver these services on the ground, yet much of their time still goes into paper timesheets, phone coordination and manual reconciliation of hours and invoices. At SZOWES we see what this costs: less time for people and less room for organisations to grow.
Good Support offers a practical response to these challenges, connecting municipalities, care providers, carers and people receiving care through one system.
Why a regional support network looks for innovation
SZOWES, the West Pomeranian Network of Social Economy Support Centres (Sieć Zachodniopomorska Ośrodków Wsparcia Ekonomii Społecznej), supports the social economy across the West Pomeranian region of Poland. Through its support centres in several sub-regions, the network helps social enterprises, cooperatives and NGOs develop. It also connects them with the local authorities that commission social services. For this reason, we look for innovative solutions that serve social policy and, at the same time, strengthen the capacity of the sector. Good Support is one of them.
Built by the sector, for the sector
Good Support was designed and developed by the Science for Environment Foundation (Fundacja Nauka dla Środowiska) in Koszalin. The Foundation is a partner of SZOWES and itself a social economy entity, so it knows the daily reality of providers from the inside. It created the system to answer a practical need: social services had to become easier to reach for the people who need them and easier to organise for those who provide them. The system was first put into practice in a project co-funded by the European Social Fund, in which the West Pomeranian Region and Caritas, as partners, used it to organise and deliver services. The result was an autonomous system connecting the municipality, the care provider, the carer, the person cared for and the family, without an expensive telecentre.
RegioStars 2019: the beginning of the road
In October 2019, Good Support won the European Commission’s RegioStars Award in the category “Combatting inequalities and poverty”. For many projects, an award marks the end of the story. For Good Support, it marked the start. Since then, the Foundation has kept investing in the system, developing and refining it based on feedback from carers, providers and municipalities. It has been tested in very different conditions, from small towns to large cities.
Tested in practice and under pressure
The scale of use shows how flexible the model is. In Wrocław, more than 600 municipal carers use the system, and over 1.4 million hours of care have been managed through it. In Sławno, a small town, six carers support more than twenty residents. The same tool serves both settings.
The COVID-19 pandemic became a real stress test. During the lockdown, the system was made available free of charge to support organisations and community self-help, connecting people in need with those willing to help with everyday tasks.
What makes it innovative
The innovation of Good Support lies less in any single feature than in the way it turns everyday care work into reliable, verifiable information.
Proof of delivery. A carer can start a visit by scanning the care recipient’s QR code, and the recipient confirms its completion with a signature on the screen, or the carer documents it with a photograph. The system records when and where each service took place, tracking location only during working hours. Every service in the settlement therefore has a documented trace of delivery.
Settlement by real minutes. The system records the exact start and end of each service, including pauses and breaks. Care can therefore be settled according to the actual minutes spent with the person, not flat-rate hours, and every minute can be checked with recorded data. Rounding is applied only where local rules require it, and the coordinator confirms the result.
One digital cycle, from assessment to settlement. A social worker can carry out the needs assessment interview in the mobile app, including an assessment of independence on the Barthel scale. Decisions and service catalogues pass electronically to the provider, and tasks are linked to the administrative decision, so the system flags any plan that exceeds the hours granted.
The user’s voice. The system can be extended with an assessment of service quality by care recipients and their families, adding their perspective to the data on how care is delivered.
Safety beyond the visit. A telecare layer can connect alarm wristbands and fall and activity sensors based on radio or LIDAR technology, with no camera or microphone. Care recipients then remain under passive safety supervision between visits as well.
What it brings to cities and regions
Municipalities and regions, as commissioners, gain a continuous, real-time view of the services they pay for. They can see whether each visit took place, when, and what was recorded about its delivery. The system flags late arrivals, absences, and visits that do not follow the plan, so a gap in care is noticed while it can still be addressed. Public funds therefore can be settled against the documented service delivery, making use of these funds easier to monitor, report and audit. Requests from residents can go to a care provider, a Centre for Social Services or a social welfare centre, depending on how the local system is organised.
For social economy organisations, the system makes it possible to manage a dispersed field team from one place. Coordinators plan work on a shared calendar, see who is available, reassign tasks between carers and communicate with the whole team through messages and announcements. The system detects planning conflicts, such as absences, overlapping visits or hours exceeding those granted, so the team’s time can be used efficiently, and gaps can be covered quickly. Work can be planned in detail by the coordinator or left to carers who choose their own tasks within clear requirements, and open tasks can be offered to selected teams, including volunteers. Paperwork gives way to ready reports and digital records, which lightens the administrative burden. Handover notes between carers support continuity of care, and documented delivery gives providers solid evidence of the quality of their work when reported to public commissioners.
Carers are guided through the working day on a standard smartphone, Android or iOS, with schedules, checklists and voice notes, also offline. Residents and families request services directly in the system and gain confidence that the planned visit has actually taken place.
Ready to scale and to grow
Good Support is no longer a pilot. It is a deployed and tested-in-practice solution that can work at any scale, from a single small provider to a city-wide service. A municipality can start with smartphone-based services at a low initial cost and extend the system as needs grow, with ongoing maintenance and security. The system already works in Polish and English, and configurable service catalogues allow it to be adapted to other countries and service models.
Good Support was at the Diesis Network online session “Rethinking Local Solutions: Social Economy in Cities and Regions” on 20 October. If you miss it, you can watch it here.