MNP has four homes across the South East, including Burnham House, Millfield House, Tristford House and Sandgate Manor, incorporating the Woodland Lodges.

 

This expansion will help realise Wellgate’s plans to grow its network of homes across the South East.

 

MNP Complete Care Group, which runs four care homes in Kent for adults with learning and physical disabilities, will keep its branding while still becoming part of the Wellgate Care Group.

 

All 120 of the staff of MNP are joining the Wellgate Care acquisition, and they have started a recruitment drive to uphold and stabilise the new growth. Wellgate Care has already recruited a new director of care, Debbie Smith, who has more than 20 years of experience in care, and a new compliance director, Andy Denness.

 

The acquisition is backed by Civitas Social Housing, the real estate investment trust which invests exclusively in portfolios of social homes in England and Wales.

 

Wellgate Care now plans to enhance and upgrade facilities for residents and staff which will include undertaking physical improvements in the homes.

Simon Hill, Wellgate Care founder, said: "It’s an important time for Wellgate Care and for everyone connected to our care homes, as we continue to build our offering to meet the evolving needs of local authorities and residents alike.

 

"We are looking forward to working closely with the MNP team and commissioning bodies in the area to continue to deliver the very best care packages for our residents and their families."

 

Jack Eldridge, managing director of Wellgate Care, added: "We’re pleased to be acquiring MNP, which has provided an excellent standard of high-quality care to residents in Kent for more than 35 years and has a well-established reputation in the local community."

 

Here at Time and Attendance South East, we would certainly recommend that one of the features that Wellgate Care investigates and upgrades if necessary is its time and attendance management system. 

 

Upgrading to a more centralised and full-featured system such as our WinTA.NET software and clocking terminal has a number of clear benefits. Between care workers clocking in and out for their varying shift patterns to contract workers coming in for gardening or repairs or assigned medical check-ups, it can be difficult for care home managers to have a clear idea of who is in the building at any one time. This is vital information not only for the security of everyone involved, but also for their safety in situations such as fire alarms. 

 

Our time and attendance system records everyone’s entrance and exit from controlled doors, using either smartcards or the more expensive but more secure biometric measurements of hands or fingerprints. 

 

Another potential problem caused by different workers operating on different types of shifts is the paper timesheet. Many businesses still use these, and then unfortunate payroll staff get stuck dealing with awful handwriting, incorrect entries and even downright deliberate time theft. It’s not fair on anyone, it’s inefficient and it’s probably losing you money. 

 

All the data from our system on when people went through controlled doors is exportable onto all major payroll programmes. We also have the Self Service Module, which can be accessed from a browser or from your mobile via the app (available on Android and iOS). This enables employees to sign in and out, and request holiday amongst other features. 

 

If the clocking in/out is done from a mobile, the information is transferred to the central Tensor.NET application, including GPS position data so that you can make sure your employees are where they should be at that time.