The handover carries the shift forward. ARC assembles most of it — who's in, what happened, what's open — and you add the judgement that isn't in the records.

Write it

ARC pulls together the young people, the shift's events, outstanding tasks, open incidents, appointments coming up in the next 30 days, and any risk assessments waiting to be acknowledged. Tasks assigned to the home's manager are left out: they are the manager's, not the oncoming shift's, and they don't hold up closing the shift either.

You write the parts that need a person:

Ongoing Concerns — what the next shift should be watching
Appointments / Commitments — what's coming, and anything needing preparation
Operational Notes — the practical business of the house

Write for someone walking in cold. "Settled after a difficult morning" tells the next shift more than a list of times.

Mark it ready

Choose Mark Ready for Next Shift.

Where there are outstanding items — open incidents, safeguarding, unfinished tasks — ARC asks you to confirm each category under Shift Closure before it will accept the handover.

This is a confirmation, not a requirement to clear them. You are not being asked to close every task before you go home. You are being asked to confirm you've looked, and that you're passing them on knowingly. ARC re-checks on the server, so ticking without reading is the one thing it can't catch — and the whole value of the step.

Print it

Export PDF is at the top of every handover, whatever its status. It downloads the handover as a document, named handover-[home name]-[date].pdf.

The editing window closes

A handover can be edited until the next shift starts. After that it's fixed, and ARC will tell you the editing deadline has passed.

If you remember something afterwards, it goes in the current shift's handover instead. Don't chase the old one.

Acknowledge one

Coming on shift, open the handover and choose Acknowledge Handover. Your name and the time are recorded against it.

A manager can also choose Mark Reviewed on a handover that is ready, and the page then shows who reviewed it. If the handover is marked ready again after that, the review is cleared and it needs reviewing again.

That record is the point. It's how a home can show that information actually crossed the shift boundary, rather than sitting in a document nobody opened.