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Home Care - How do I make the care a success?

Christopher Downie

You've heard the horror stories, the care went badly... the carer left... So how do you make care a success?

We've been doing a lot of work around our vision as a company. What we stand for? Why we're doing it? How we're going to meet our vision. We've done some Facebook live videos around our trusting culture recently and we've more to do around this. 

We don't micro-manage our carers, tell them what to do, order them around and force them into anything. We give them a level of control over their own schedules, we build in flexibility and most importantly we trust them. By adding an extra layer of trust, our carers are more positive and proactive.

To give some insight into the social care industry; keeping carers is difficult. Nationally around 48% of carers leave within their 1st year, 36% leave each and every year, around 900 a day. Having worked as a carer prior to founding CareChooser in social care and also as a teacher and behaviour specialist in Special Educational Needs I am aware that carers and other professionals have little or no autonomy; zero control over decision-making and the average pay is £7.69/hour!

So what are we doing about it? 

We pay our carers form 60 to 75% more than the average, we have a trusting culture, we treat them warmly and we have reasonable expectations over time and tasks. Stressed, over-worked carers never last long. It ends up being short-term and a conveyor belt of carers. 

But unfortunately this alone is not enough. 

If care is to work, be positive and long lasting. We need all sides to be fully on board with our trusting culture, which is why this week we've launched our new brochure 'Building Success Between Customer and Carer - Preparing for Care and Success' 

We know this is not for everyone, this may not be for you and that's ok. But it is how we do things at CareChooser and it is a requirement for clients to join us, because it works. Positivity, trust, realistic expectations and taking the time to build a positive, warm relationship will result in the relationship being a long term one and your loved ones care will receive great care.

As I said, I know that this is not for everyone, but if you're considering CareChooser for your loved one then you should join us in our trusting culture and offer a level of flexibility to the carer. You should be reasonable and considerate about time and about tasks. It's often useful to consider the tasks and the amount of time it would take to do that task well. You should greet the carer warmly and create a warm relationship and you should give it a little time, a new placement takes a while to get the hang of for everyone. It'll take a little time for your loved one to adapt to having a new person in the house and it'll take the carer a while to get up to speed with the placement. 

If you'd like to speak with me or have any questions for me, I'm making myself personally available to answer any questions you may have. 

All the best, Christopher - CareChooser Founder

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Our 'Building Success Between Customer and Carer' brochure is free below. 

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