On call

This page is for coordinators, registered managers and owners, with a section at the end for the people who go on call.

On call is a rota, not a label on a person. You say “Priya, Friday at six until Monday at eight”, and you can hand it to somebody else the following week. It lives on each person’s record, under On call, beside their leave.

Putting somebody on call

There are two doors to the same form.

From the rota, which is usually where you are when you need it:

1. Press the chevron beside Add visit and choose Add on call. On a phone it is in the More menu.
2. Choose the person. Only people who visit clients are listed.
3. Give a From and an Until — a date and a time each, because on call starts when the office shuts, not at midnight. It opens on the day you are looking at, six in the evening until eight the next morning, which you can change.

From a person’s record, when you already know whose weekend it is:

1. Open them from Team.
2. On the On call card, press Add on call.
3. Give the same From and Until. The person is already filled in.

They get an update in their inbox saying they are on call and for how long.

You will see it in three places afterwards:

• On the rota, as a band above the grid for any stretch touching the days on screen: the names in the order they are offered, and the hours. On a phone it is the line at the top of the day.
• On the dashboard, as “On call now” with the names in order — so the question “who do I ring” has an answer when nobody is in the office.
• On their record, under On call, where you can reorder or remove.

You can put several people on the same stretch. The order is what matters: the first is offered a visit first, the second when the first cannot take it. Use the up and down arrows on the card to change the order, and the bin to take somebody off call.

Two roles cannot go on call at all: Office and Inspector. They read the records and never visit anybody, so a promise to take a visit is not theirs to make. Their record says so on the card instead of offering the button.

One person cannot be on call twice over the same hours — the platform refuses it, because two entries for one person makes the order meaningless.

The on-call template

Typing every weekend by hand gets old. Templates → On-call templates holds the shape instead: “Friday at 18:00, for 62 hours, 2 people” is one line that covers every weekend from now on.

1. Open Templates and choose the On-call templates tab.
2. Press Add cover.
3. Give the starting day, the time it starts, how many hours it runs and how many people you want on it.

Each stretch is one row: when it starts, how long it runs, how many people. Remove this cover takes a row off the template after a confirmation; the cover it already put on the rota stays.

Hours rather than an end day, because “Friday at six for 62 hours” says one thing and “ends Monday” says several.

Who gets put on it

Overnight, the platform materialises the template’s stretches six weeks ahead and fills them. It picks from the people who have agreed to that weekday — see the On call card on anybody’s record — choosing whoever has done it least in the last twelve weeks (or however many weeks Settings → Organisation → Timings counts), then whoever has gone longest since their last one. It is a rotation, not a favourite.

It will not ask:

• anybody who has not agreed to that weekday
• anybody on approved leave across any of it
• anybody already on call over those hours
• coordinators, admins or registered managers — auto-fill takes support workers only, though you can still add one by hand

Everyone it puts on call gets an update in their inbox straight away. The email waits for the week to be published, which is the same rule the rest of the rota keeps: the platform plans six weeks ahead in silence, and publishing a week is how people are told about it. Even then, a stretch gets an email of its own only if it starts within two days; anything further out is counted in the next morning summary. An email about a weekend six weeks away is not news anybody can act on.

The exception is a week that is already published. If the overnight job puts somebody on call for a week your team has already been told about, they are told there and then, by the same two-day rule — exactly as they would be for a visit added to a published week.

Publishing the same week twice does not email anybody twice.

If nobody can take a stretch, it is not filled quietly: an alert lands on the coordinators’ inbox saying which weekend is short and by how many people.

It never takes back what you decided

If you have already put somebody on a weekend, the overnight job leaves them there. A stretch that wants two people and has one keeps the one you chose and fills the other. Nothing you did by hand is moved, replaced or improved on.

That rule holds across the whole rota, not just on call: automatic passes fill what is open and overwrite nothing.

What being on call changes

Being on call changes who gets offered a visit first, and how strongly depends on how soon the visit is:

When the visit starts	What on call is worth
Within a day	More than anything else. The person on call is offered it ahead of the client’s own care team.
One to three days away	Enough to come ahead of somebody with no claim on the visit, and never ahead of the care team.
More than three days away	Nothing at all.

That last row is deliberate. On call is for the visit that needs somebody now — a support worker off sick at twenty to seven, a visit moved, leave approved at short notice. If it counted for next month’s rota too, next month’s rota would quietly be built out of your on-call list.

It also lets a visit be filled on a day the organisation is closed. Nobody else can be given a place on a bank holiday; somebody on call can, because that is what the rota is for.

Where a suggestion names somebody, the reason says so: “on call, 1 in line”, and “on call for a visit within the day” when it is the urgent kind.

What it never overrides

Four things stay exactly as they are, whoever is on call:

• The safeguarding blocklist. A worker a client must not see is never offered that client, on call or not. This is the one rule in the platform with no exceptions.
• Approved leave. Somebody on leave is not offered a visit. If they are on call and on leave at once, that is a conversation to have with them, not something the platform decides.
• A visit they are already on. Nobody is offered two visits at the same time.
• A client who is away. A client in hospital needs no visit from anybody.

Hours

An on-call visit may take somebody over their contracted hours, and the suggestion does not hold that against them — you asked them to be reachable, and this is what that means.

It is still recorded. The suggestion carries the line “over contract” with the hours on it, and so does the decision kept against the place, so a review months later can see exactly what was asked of somebody.

Time worked on a closed day counts as their hours like any other, so the rest of that week is planned around it.

If you are the one on call

You get an update in your inbox when you are put on, saying when it starts and ends. Nothing else changes about how you work: visits arrive in My week as usual once a coordinator has assigned them.

Being on call does not assign you anything by itself. It means you come first when something needs covering, and a coordinator still puts you on the visit.

Handing a stretch back

On your own page’s On call tab, each stretch still ahead has Can’t do this one. It asks first, because it is not undone: you come off the stretch, the coordinators’ alerts shelf says who and which, and the platform asks the next person who agreed to that day — the same way the cover template fills itself overnight. If nobody can take it, the shelf says that too, and a coordinator finds cover by hand. A stretch that has already started cannot be handed back here; ring the office.

The allowance

Each stretch can carry an allowance in pence, for payroll. Settings → Organisation → Timings, “On-call allowance per stretch, in pence”, is recorded on every stretch a coordinator puts somebody on by hand from then on; a stretch the overnight fill takes carries none. It shows beside the stretch as “£25.00 allowance”. Nothing is paid by the platform; the figure is there for the finance work to read.

On your own record

Open your own record and the On call card speaks to you: “You are not on call”, “You are 2 of 3 in line”, “Days you can be on call”. A coordinator opening the same record reads it about you instead: “Not on call”, “2 of 3 in line”. Same facts, said to the right person.

When somebody leaves

Removing a person from the team takes them off every on-call stretch still ahead of them, the same night’s fill offers those stretches to whoever is next in line, and the stretches they already did stay on the record.