How EquiCare works

From first request to the right next step

EquiCare covers the stage before a full Care Act assessment. Each request is captured once, organised around the Care Act, and put in front of a qualified practitioner with a suggested next step and the reasons for it.

EquiCare modules

• EquiCare Triage

  EquiCare Triage is the front-door module and our main offer.

• EquiCare Notes

  EquiCare Notes supports statutory assessments by turning assessment conversations into a transcript, a summary and a draft report.

• Full EquiCare

  Full EquiCare is the full suite of EquiCare modules.

The journey

1. Request

   A person, carer, professional or council employee gets in touch using whichever route suits them.

   • Online form with an AI assistant Live
     People can type or speak, at any time of day or night. The form asks follow-up questions based on earlier answers.
   • Staffed phone line with live transcription Live
     Your team takes the call while EquiCare transcribes it live, so nothing needs to be typed up afterwards.
   • AI phone assistant Live
     For out-of-hours, busy times and calls in other languages, with the caller's consent. It can answer on your existing number, through call forwarding that callers don't notice, or on a new 0800 number.
   • Voice line opening message Live
     The opening message tells callers in danger to ring 999, in their own language. Out of hours, it also tells callers when their request will be reviewed.
   • Risk flags on calls Live
     If a caller mentions risk, such as self-harm, neglect or immediate danger, the case outcome is set to High and the detection is logged for safeguarding audit. The case must be reviewed by a practitioner, with the indicators shown so they cannot be missed. The voice line is not an emergency service and is not monitored overnight: out-of-hours requests are reviewed when the team is next working, usually the next morning.
   • Practitioner check of voice-line requests Live
     A practitioner confirms the details of every voice-line request before it reaches triage.
   • Automatic routing of out-of-hours flags to your Emergency Duty Team Planned
     EquiCare does not currently route flags automatically to an Emergency Duty Team. Councils should keep their existing out-of-hours and emergency arrangements in place. Routing will be configured to each council's own Emergency Duty Team arrangements, agreed during the discovery workshop.
   • In-call 999 reminder Planned
     EquiCare does not currently give callers an automatic in-call 999 reminder when risk is mentioned. Until then, the call opening message and our published contact information direct callers to ring 999 in an emergency.

2. One record

   Live

   Whatever the channel, the information lands in a single structured record in English. EquiCare supports 10 languages, all available both online and by phone:

   • English
   • French
   • Urdu
   • Punjabi
   • Polish
   • Arabic
   • Romanian
   • Hindi
   • Spanish
   • Bengali

   Where a call is machine-translated, the practitioner can see the original wording and hear the audio alongside the English version. Voice-line call recordings are stored in Microsoft Azure in the UK.

3. Triage support

   Live

   EquiCare reviews the request against the Care Act 2014 needs and outcomes framework and the council's own front-door criteria. The practitioner sees:

   • a short summary in plain English
   • a suggested next step, such as a needs assessment or information and advice
   • any possible safeguarding concerns and a suggested urgency
   • the reasons for each suggestion, linked to what the person said

4. Practitioner decision

   Every request is reviewed by a qualified practitioner, not only the flagged ones. Flagged requests are prioritised so the most urgent are seen first. The practitioner checks the reasons, changes anything that is wrong and decides what happens next. EquiCare's triage is advisory: it does not decide eligibility or make safeguarding decisions.

5. Next step and signposting

   Live

   The council's decision is carried out: progression to assessment, a safeguarding process, or information and advice. Where a practitioner decides a request should not progress, EquiCare suggests up to five relevant local community organisations. Only after the practitioner's decision is the person told the outcome, by SMS and email. People can also log in to see the status of their request.

Walk through it with your own scenario

Tell us how your front door works today and we'll show where EquiCare could help, and where it wouldn't.