Most of the agency owners I sit down with run a good service and know it. What they don't have is a picture of the next two years. Regulation is coming, the money is changing shape, carers are harder to find than clients, and families have started expecting to see what's going on. Each of those lands as a separate headline. Together they're one journey, and it helps to see the whole road before you set off.
This page is that road, drawn plainly. It's also the honest introduction to who I am and why a software company in Donegal is writing about any of this. I'll keep the two apart; you can skip the second part if you like.
1 · Who this is for
Independent agencies first: the ones where the owner knows every carer by name. Hours from the HSE, from private clients, or a mix of both. Coordination running on a spreadsheet, a group chat, and one person's memory. The owner is also the HR department, the complaints officer, and the person who answers the phone at half seven on a Sunday.
If that's you, nothing in the next two years is aimed over your head. There's no small-agency exemption in the new law, no small-agency rate from the HSE, and no small-agency version of a HIQA inspection. The good news is that a small agency can get ready faster than a large one, because there's less to untangle. And if you're bigger than that, with a few offices and a hundred carers or more, you're welcome here too. It's the same road; there's just more of you on it.
2 · Five changes coming your way
Read those five together and a pattern shows. Every one of them is a question about evidence. Not whether care happened, but whether you can show it, to a regulator, a funder or a family, months later, without the person who remembers everything in the room.
3 · The order they'll arrive in
Only that go-ahead sets a real date, and I'd be wary of anyone who gives you one before it. But the shape tells you the useful thing: the agencies that use the quiet year get to walk through registration. The rest sprint, alongside two hundred others reaching for the same documents.
4 · What good looks like on the far side
Picture the same agency in 2028, on an ordinary Tuesday.
Records live in one place, and everyone knows where. The rota is the plan for the week and, once the week is over, the record of what cover was in place. The carer's tick at the door is the visit record. A call that hasn't happened by half nine is noticed at half nine, not at half eleven when the daughter rings.
Care plans were reviewed with the client, and it's written down who was in the room. Every certificate has an expiry date that surfaces itself before it lapses. Reading a policy is a signature and a date, done on a phone in the car. Incidents are logged in the fifteen minutes after they happen, with what was done about them.
On Friday, the funder's invoice is an export, and so is payroll. The family can see the visits without ringing the office. And when the inspector comes, it's boring, because everything she asks for is where it was said to be.
(That's how Careloom is put together: the rota you write is also your record of who was meant to be where, and the carer's tick at the door is your visit record. The paperwork comes out of the day's work instead of being done after it.)
5 · Who I am, and why I'm building this
Careloom started as software I built to coordinate one family's 24-hour home care in Donegal, because nothing affordable fitted how home care actually works: the day has a shape, the carers have preferences, the family wants to know, and the paperwork has to be right or somebody doesn't get paid. That system still runs today.
What I'm building now is the same thing for independent agencies, and there are three beliefs behind it.
It should fit your agency, not the other way round. Your words (clients or service users, carers or HCAs), how your day is split up, what you pay for nights and Sundays, the paperwork your funder wants, and how you prove a visit happened. Those are questions I ask you when you set up, and you can change the answers whenever you like. I haven't decided them for you because one agency somewhere does it that way.
Small agencies deserve a straight deal. One monthly price that only goes up as your team of carers grows. Office staff and families log in for nothing. No set-up fee, no long contract, and the first month is free. Your records are yours to take away any day you like, and if I ever stop, you'd have a year's notice in writing.
You should be able to talk to the person who built it. Careloom is built and looked after in Donegal, by me. When you ring, you get the person who made it, and when you ask for something, it tends to be done in days, not next year.
And three things I'm deliberately not building: payroll, HR and recruitment, and software that claims to write your rota for you. The first two are done well by people who do only that, and Careloom hands them what they need. The third is something nobody has really managed, whatever the brochures say.
6 · How to use this series
Over the next twelve months I'll publish two guides a month, in the order an agency actually meets these things, and each one ends with the same half-page: what to do this month.
If you'd rather not check back, the checklist below comes with one plain email a month, and nothing else in it.
7 · Honest questions, honest answers
Are you selling me something?+
Eventually, yes, and I'd rather say so than pretend. But every guide in this series stands on its own. If you never buy anything from me and your agency is readier for it, that's a fair trade for the hour it took to write.
You're one person. What if you disappear?+
Then you take your records with you. You can download everything, any day, for nothing, and the year's notice is in writing. Careloom runs on ordinary, well-known services based in the EU, so another company could keep it going. The other side of one person is that the person who built it answers the phone.
Is my clients' data safe with a small company?+
Each agency's records are kept apart from every other agency's, and that's built into the way they're stored, not a setting someone could get wrong. Every time someone looks at a client's health record, it's noted. There's a written procedure for deleting a client's records when the law says you must, and I'll send you the data-protection agreement before you ask. Small company doesn't mean careless; the security page has the detail.
Do I need software for this?+
No. Inspectors want records, not products, and a well-kept paper system passes. The honest case for software is narrower than the marketing: it makes the evidence fall out of work you're already doing, instead of being a second job after the kids are in bed.
Will you tell me which of the big systems is best?+
No. I won't name competitors in these guides, here or anywhere public. The market is small, owners talk, and it's not my place. In a conversation I'll answer any factual question you ask.
We're grand on paper and Excel.+
You probably are, until the registration window opens. The switch takes a fortnight now. It'll take the same fortnight in 2028, except everyone else will be in the queue with you, and the inspector won't wait.
8 · Where Careloom fits, briefly
Careloom is the rota, care plans, medication records, timesheets, incidents and the inspection evidence, in one place, built in Ireland around the rules above, for independent agencies of any size that want to be ready early. The family portal is free, forever. If you'd like to see it on a week that looks like yours, book a twenty-minute walkthrough and I'll take you through it myself.
But whatever you end up using, start with the half-page gap list. It costs nothing, and it's the only step everything else depends on.
The HIQA-readiness checklist
The eight records and the policy schedule, as a printable two-page self-audit. Mark each line have it, scattered or missing and you'll have your registration to-do list by the end of a coffee.