Digital care records: what comes after going paperless

Where the sector is now

A few years ago, many care services still kept care plans and daily notes in folders. That has changed quickly. In its Adult social care provider statistics for August 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care estimates that as of June 2026, 83.6% of adult social care provider locations registered with the CQC had a digital social care record, up from 79.3% a year earlier. It also estimates that 91.9% of the people those providers care for now have one. [S22]

The same release estimates that a further 5.9% of locations were in the process of putting one in place. [S22] The figures are reported by providers themselves, so they are a good guide rather than an audit.

Paperless is not the finish line

The government's aim goes further than having any system. In its findings from the 2025 adult social care provider technology survey, DHSC says the ambition is for all care providers to be fully digitised by the end of this Parliament. [S23] It defines a fully digitised provider as one using an assured digital social care record and meeting the "standards met" level on the Data Security and Protection Toolkit.

So for most providers the question has moved on. It is no longer "should we go digital?" but "is our system helping our team, our clients and our partners as much as it could?"

What gets in the way

The same survey asked providers about the barriers to adopting care technology over the next five years. The most common answers were about money and people:

• 73% of respondents named the set up cost of the technology
• 70% named the ongoing licence cost
• 52% named staff training costs and high staff turnover
• 41% named the cost of cyber and data security [S23]

That survey was voluntary and took place in February and March 2025, so it reflects the providers who chose to answer. Even so, it matches what I hear from care businesses. The system is often not the problem. The gaps are in how it was set up, how people were trained and how it connects to everything else.

Getting more from the system you already have

Before you think about switching, it is usually worth looking hard at how your current system is used day to day.

1. Walk through a real shift. Sit with a care worker and a coordinator and follow one visit from rota to record to review. Note every time someone writes the same thing twice, or works around the system.
2. Tidy your templates. Long care plans and notes with dozens of optional fields slow people down. Keep what your service, your clients and the CQC actually need, in plain English.
3. Make training short and repeatable. With turnover high, training cannot be a single session at induction. Short guides and screen recordings that work on a phone help new starters get confident quickly.
4. Join up the data. Rotas, records, invoices and reports often live in separate places. Even simple connections can save hours of copying each week.
5. Check your security basics. The Data Security and Protection Toolkit is part of the definition of fully digitised, so make sure yours is up to date.

Where we can help

Our Workflow analysis and digitalised improvements service starts by mapping how work really flows today, then finds the bottlenecks and duplicate steps and puts the right fixes in place. If your team needs help learning a system, our Staff training content service makes short, plain English guides and videos around the tools you use.

If you would like a second view on how your records system is working for you, book a discovery call.

Sources

1. Department of Health and Social Care, Adult social care provider statistics, England: quarterly update to August 2026, published 3 September 2026. [S22]
2. Department of Health and Social Care, Findings from the 2025 adult social care provider technology survey, published 6 March 2026. [S23]