About NHS Health Visiting Teams

NHS Health Visiting teams provide care to people in their local communities. Their dedicated teams work across large geographical areas, delivering vital services in a variety of settings, including patients' homes. Healthcare professionals often work alone in unpredictable environments, managing intense workloads and significant safeguarding responsibilities.

The Challenge

The Trust already had robust protocols for lone worker safety. However, the processes were inconsistent across different localities and teams. They relied heavily on manual methods like phone calls, paper logs, and spreadsheets, which were time consuming for both frontline staff and the managers who are responsible for their safety.

This manual approach created limited real-time visibility for managers and a high administrative burden to confirm staff safety and evidence compliance. For health visitors, it meant juggling different safety procedures and sacrificing precious care time for admin tasks. The Trust needed a way to simplify and standardise its lone working practices without adding complexity for its already stretched teams.

The Solution

Cambridge Community Services NHS Trust selected Visibly for its simple, frontline-first design that fits how community teams actually work. Health visitors can start and stop lone working protection in seconds directly from their phones, with 98% of staff requiring zero training.

The paper logs and manual check-in calls were replaced by a single, intuitive mobile application. This created a consistent, trust-wide safety standard that could be applied across all teams while still allowing for local, risk based adjustments. The system works reliably even in areas with poor mobile signal, ensuring missed check-ins still trigger alerts. Staff remain in control and their privacy is respected, which helped build trust and drive rapid adoption by the teams.

The Results

The implementation of Visibly delivered significant operational and business outcomes, modernising the Trust’s approach to lone worker safety without extra complexity for the teams.

The impact on daily efficiency was almost immediate. The Trust saw a 70% reduction in time spent managing lone working processes, freeing up an estimated 10 hours per week for team leads.

Response confidence soared, with an average response time of under 5 seconds for alerts and critically, 100% of missed check-ins still escalated appropriately even when connectivity dropped.

From a governance perspective, Visibly provided a single, auditable lone working system across all localities. This gave managers better oversight without resorting to intrusive monitoring and made it far easier to access evidence for audits or safeguarding reviews. The time saved on administration was reinvested directly back into patient care.

Why It Matters

By simplifying its safety processes, NHS Trust have enabled its community teams to focus more on what they do best, delivering exceptional care. The time saved on administrative tasks translates directly into more time available for patients, improved responsiveness and stronger support for critical safeguarding duties. Visibly has helped make strong safety practices more efficient, consistent and sustainable for the long term.