Guides and news
Guides, explainers, tips, news and findings from real tests. Every piece is written for people who run care and support services.
Topic
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Showing all 19 pieces
DHSC has published its first guidance for care providers on using AI. It gets the basics right, but says nothing about DPIAs, CQC or consent. What it asks of you, and what you still need to do yourself.
News
Where Mental Capacity Act duties meet AI in care records. Capacity is decision-specific, telling people is not the same as asking them, and AI can never make a best interests decision.
Guide6 min read
A one-line prompt that turns a confident draft into a checkable one. It is not a reliability signal, but it does point you at the right paragraphs.
Tip1 min read
Half of charities have no AI policy. Here is what one has to cover to satisfy CQC and the ICO, why one page beats twenty, and how to write it in an afternoon.
Guide5 min read
Work out whether a tool is any good using an invented case, not a real one. You learn the same thing without putting anyone's information anywhere.
Tip1 min read
CQC encourages AI but does not approve tools, and says the presence or absence of AI does not predict a rating. What it does expect is that you meet the standards you already have.
Explainer7 min read
The same chatbot handles your information completely differently depending on which plan you are signed in to. A side-by-side look at what each of the four big assistants actually does.
Explainer7 min read
Seven rules a care worker can actually remember, each with the reason behind it and a real example of what goes wrong when it is ignored.
Guide5 min read
AI writes fluently and is confidently wrong. The specific failure modes that matter in care records, and how to read a draft so you catch them.
Guide4 min read
Where AI touches safeguarding, the rules get stricter, not looser. What must never be automated, the quiet risk in AI-smoothed records, and what to do if details reach an unapproved tool.
Explainer4 min read
Nine questions that separate a supplier who has thought about care from one who has not, with the answers that should worry you and the ones that should reassure.
Guide5 min read
The ICO requires you to tell people before you start a new use of their data, not after. What that means in practice, how to say it plainly, and where consent does and does not come into it.
Guide5 min read
For AI touching care records, almost certainly yes. The ICO names AI as innovative technology, and care data is special category data. Two triggers is the threshold.
Explainer5 min read
Self-directed support is about choice and control. AI can widen that or quietly narrow it, and the difference depends on who the tool is working for.
Explainer3 min read
Four in five charities now use AI. Half have no policy for it, and small charities are furthest behind on both counts.
News
Licences are the small part. Real prices for the main tools, plus the costs nobody quotes you — staff time, the DPIA, training and the checking that never stops.
Explainer5 min read
No jargon, no hype. What these tools actually do, why they get things confidently wrong, and which of the things you have been told about AI are not true.
Explainer3 min read
You cannot know whether AI saved time if you never knew how long the job took. A method for measuring a task in two weeks, and the three things that make measurement go wrong.
Guide4 min read
Two years of work on responsible AI in adult social care has become an alliance any provider can join, and a supplier pledge you can hold tech companies to.
News
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