Whole-family record

A family member is a person, not a note on somebody else’s record.

Every family member has their own record, with their own care plans, notes and referrals, linked to the person you are supporting. It is the model underneath everything else Ameryst does, and it is something other systems cannot do.

Ameryst Patient and family details

Patient Family members Family Affected family members (1) Navigate to

The Marsh family

Five records, each a person in their own right.

EM Ella MarshPatient Care plansNotes

JM Jo MarshMother Lives with Parental responsibility

PE Peter EllisFather Parental responsibility

BM Ben MarshBrother, 9 Own referral

LM Leah MarshSister, 13 Own referral

Parental responsibility, best interest, power of attorney and deputyship all sit on the record.

Sibling support session Written once, landed on both records BMLM

Everyone in the family is a record. Who may act, and on whose behalf, is recorded. One note, written once, on both siblings' records.

How it works

A record each, and the links between them are real.

Other systems can hold a patient record and a family member record. Linking them is the part they cannot do.

1Each individual is a person

Own care plans, own notes, own referrals.

The same detailed record a patient gets, for everyone in the family.

2The family as a group

Joint plans and joint notes where they are needed.

Guardianship and authorities recorded and used appropriately.

3Write once, land everywhere

One contact can write to several family members at once.

Which is only possible because the link is real.

It underpins notes, family access and family-level reporting, and each of them works at family level because of it.

Why it earns its place

Family-level care you can actually evidence.

Funders, regulators and families each ask for different information and evidence. The same model answers all three.

Funders ask for family-level reporting. Being able to report on care delivered to the whole family rather than just the patient is what turns a statement of values into a line in a grant application or an ICB case.
Subject access requests get simpler, not harder. Because each person’s record is genuinely their own, extracting one person’s data does not mean untangling them from somebody else’s notes.
The GDPR tools follow the same shape. Data can be destroyed or obfuscated for a whole family, a patient only, or a single family member, with a cooling-off period before it happens. There is a subject access request extraction tool, and photographs flag themselves as out of date after a period you set, which matters more than it sounds when young people on your caseload are growing up.

In the module

What our family care records software covers

Records for everyone

Each family member in their own right

Genuinely linked

Joint plans and joint notes where they apply

Affected family notes

One contact, several records, one action

Authority recorded

Parental responsibility, attorney, deputyship

Own service referrals

Family members referred in their own names

Family-level reporting

Care delivered to the family, not just the patient

Per-person permissions

Down to individual sections of a record

SAR extraction

One person’s data, cleanly separated

Why it matters

What a whole family record is worth

Income & funding

“We support the whole family” becomes a number

Almost every provider says it. Very few can show a funder how many hours of support went to family members, or how many parents accessed counselling, because their system only ever recorded the patient. Holding each family member as a person in their own right is what makes that reportable, and reportable is what wins the grant.

Family & patient experience

Families feel known

Being recorded as a person rather than as a relative of a patient is not a small thing to a member of the family.

Compliance & governance

The authority is on the record

Parental responsibility, capacity for consent, attorney and deputyship are recorded as facts about a person, so who may see and sign what is answerable from the record.

Reputation

Nothing missed between records

Writing the same contact to several people at once removes the duplication where information usually goes astray.

How the model works

Four things that follow from one design decision.

Each person is a record

With their own plans, notes and referrals

The links are real

A real link, in both directions

Authority is explicit

Who may see and sign what, and why

Reporting follows

Family-level care becomes a figure

Search works across all of it: by patient, family member, phone number, organisation or professional, and partial names are fine.

Questions services ask about the family record

How is this different from recording next of kin?

A next-of-kin field is a piece of text on somebody else’s record. Here each family member is a person with their own care plans, their own notes and their own referrals, linked to the person you support. That link is what lets a sibling hold their own referral, a parent their own counselling record, and a single note reach both children at once.

Can a relative be referred to a service in their own name?

Yes. Every family member's record has the same functionality as the patient's, so any relative can be referred to family support, counselling or complementary therapy and tracked through their own pathway. The referral sits on their own record with its own notes, tasks and actions log, which is also what makes that work reportable later.

Can we write one note to several members of the family at once?

Yes, and it is the clearest everyday benefit of the model. One contact can write to several siblings’ records simultaneously, with a full audit behind it, which removes both the re-typing and the risk of the second record being forgotten.

How do you handle who is allowed to do what?

Explicitly. Capacity for consent, parental responsibility, best interests, power of attorney and deputyship all control who may see and sign what. That flows through to family access, so the right parent signs the right plan. Because the authority is recorded against the person rather than assumed from the relationship, it is still answerable from the record months later.

Does this help with subject access requests?

Yes. There is a one-action extraction tool, and because each person's record is genuinely their own, responding to a request does not mean separating one person's information out of somebody else's notes by hand. The same shape applies to erasure, which can be run for a whole family, the patient alone, or a single family member.

Can we restrict who sees a particular family?

Yes, down to a fine grain. Every tab and function is permission-controlled. Individual staff can see the whole caseload, just those they are keyworkers for, or blocked from specific records, for example where a staff member is related to a family. Access is set by role as well as by person, so what somebody sees is decided when their account is set up.

Does it work if we mostly support adults living alone?

Yes. The model does not force a family onto a record that does not have one, and there is a lives-alone flag. What it does mean is that when a family does matter, you are not fighting the system to record them.

Explore other functionality

Patient notes Family access Care plans Referrals Reporting

See it working with your own service in mind.

Half an hour or an hour, whichever suits. We’ll spend it on the parts that matter to your service.