Home Care Guide
Christopher Downie
How do you talk to parents about care at home?

How do I talk to a love on about their health? - CareChooser Home Care Guide - 2020

How do you talk to parents about care at home?

Home Care Guide

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Home Care - What is a Local Care Expert?

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The best of online with Local Care Experts on your doorstep.

We're online. We have online home carer profiles and the care is tracked online in (near) real-time! It's practically instant! 

However we also offer the personalised home care service that our clients want and love. We come and meet you and your loved ones in person. A Local Care Expert in your area. 

We're hybrid offline-online, similar to Purple Bricks and Yopa. It's far easier to use than the broken agency model and you'll get the personalised service that isn't available with online agencies. 

So how does it work? 

Request a call back with your Local Care Expert who will then schedule a face-to-face consultation. We'll then visit again and introduce you to 1 or 2 carers that will consistently care for your loved ones. 

We already have dedicated Local Care Experts for London and for Haringey.  

We'd love to know what you think, if you have any ideas for us, do send us a message at hello@carechooser.com or pop us over a message on Facebook.  

If you think you'd make a GREAT Local Care Expert, be great at meeting our home care clients face-to-face, listening to their ideas, concerns and expectations and offering them local knowledge on the services and support available in your local area. We'd love to hear from you, get in touch with us at hello@carechooser.com or get in touch here. 

You'll need to fit into out trusting culture, be genuinely warm and caring and want to make a difference in your local area. 

Home Care Questions - Other Episodes:

CareChooser

Download our brochure below: 

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Home Care - How do the carer profiles work?

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Our carer profiles can be viewed online before you book, they give you a chance to understand a little more about the carer.

What do the symbols mean? Here we break down our profiles for you. 

We keep our profiles as up-to-date as possible, its worth double checking the status of the carer. Should you be interested in on of our carers there is a button below the profile where you can send a message to the carer.  Our telephone number is also below the profiles, so you can contact our expert care advisors to chat about a carer you are interested in or you can use the call back form and one of advisors will get back to you as soon as possible. Another alternative is the live chat at the bottom of the page, we're pretty responsive on there!! 

What do the carer profile symbols mean? 

These three symbols tell you which type of care the carer specialises in, home care, 24 hour live in care or night care. Some carers may be available for more than one type of care. 

DBS.png

This is the UK government's Disclose and Barring Service logo, formerly known as CRB  (Criminal Record Bureau check). Underneath this we update the status of the check; 'Checked & Approved' or 'Not Yet Checked & Approved' if we are in the process of approving the criminal record check. 

Home care locations.png

This symbol is our location icon. Next to this icon will be the carers' current location, where they are currently living. This is often one of the key, major factors in whether the carer will be a good local match.  

This is our drivers icon! If this icon is present on the home carer's profile then they have both a driver's license and a car. If they have just one of the two; a car or a licence but not the other or neither the icon will be absent from the profile. 

This icon indicates which health conditions the carer has previously worked with and supported, this could be either as a home carer, live in carer, night carer, in a care home setting or on a voluntary basis, some carers also have personal experience caring for family members with certain conditions. If you'd like further information about the carer's history, we're more than happy to provide the information. 

Home Care Qualifications.png

This icon on the profile indicates whether the carer has completed home care or social care training, certification or has completed qualifications. They will be listed below the icon on the profile along with information on the level at which the qualification was obtained such as NVQ, degree level and for Health and Social Care qulaifiactions will detail the level from 1-5. Level 1 is a fairly basic level, level 2 and 3 are both good levels. Level 4 is quite advanced and level is a management level qualification. 

This icon indicates the availability of the home carer. For live in carers this section may indicate when they are available or the length of their live in care shifts. Some carers do 1 week slots, others do 2, 3, 4 or 5 week or more slots. For home care and night care this section may indicate the hours the carer is currently available for. For more information and to check the current status of this please get in touch with our advisors to check. 

Home Care Questions - Other Episodes:

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

CareChooser

Home Care Questions - Previous Episodes:

Download our brochure below: 

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

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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

Home Care Questions - Other Episodes:

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

Home Care Questions - Previous Episodes:

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Home Care - What should I look for in a carer?

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Home Care Questions - Other Episodes:

If you're thinking about getting home care to help support a loved one or looking at the option of a care home. There are lots of things to consider and think about. What should I look for in a carer?

 

The 1st thing we look for in a carer is whether they fit with our vision, it's really important to us that everyone involved with CareChooser is warm and caring and wants to make a difference to their local community. 

Qualifications

A good level of qualification is Health and Social Care Level 2. You can get higher, level 3 and level 4. Level 5 is for home care management skills. Level 1 is quite basic, level 2 is a good level of qualification. This may or may not be important to you, we find some of the best carers don't have social care qualifications but have experience caring for loved ones and are warm and caring. 

Skills

It's important to look into which skills are important to you as a family. Do you need a driver? Is the carer local enough to not need to drive? The tasks you need may affect this, does your loved one have lots of appointments to go to?

Is cooking an important skill for your carer? Personal care is an important one, check that the carer is willing to do personal care. All carers have their preferences, if personal care is a part of the care it's advisable to check this. 

Price

Check the price of the carer, per hour, per day, per night or week and check it fits within your budget. Also check that the price of the carer includes the home care companies fee and is the full amount you'll fee. The prices on our profiles are include our fee. The prices vary slightly based on the carer's skills and qualifications. 

Likes and dislikes

Get to know the carers likes and dislikes, our home care profiles tell you about the person, what they enjoy doing rather than just the clinical information. 

DBS

Check the status of the carer's DBS certificate. Our profiles will say what stage the check is at 'Checked & Approved' or 'Not Yet Checked & Approved'. Also check that an enhanced DBS check has been done. 

 

At CareChooser the most important factor we consider is whether the carer is warm and caring. Get in touch if we can help you find a carer or if we can help in any way. 

📞 0208 886 0686 

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Home Care - What Should I Consider?

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Are you feeling like you don't know which questions to ask? Unsure about what to consider and feeling alone and abandoned by care professionals. As part of My Support Network, our network of support for you we've put together a short guide of things to consider if you're in need of some support to help with your loved ones. 

Home Care Questions - Other Episodes:

If you're thinking about getting home care to help support a loved one or looking at the option of a care home. There are lots of things to consider and think about. But what are they? 

Here's our list of questions to consider.

What type of support do I need? What do I need help with in order to support my loved one?

What type of medical or health condition do they have?

What types of things can they remain independent with and do by themselves?

What types of things will they need support with? Emotional support, physical support, what other tasks might they need help with?

Will they need some level of personal care?

How much care will my loved one need? Think about how long each task would take.

What type of care will my loved one need? 2-4 hours of care, full day care, night care, 24 hour live in care.

How much will the care cost? What is my budget? Will I qualify for a direct payment?

How long might they need the care for?

Are there specific things that they may need in a carer? Are there necessary qualifications, certificates or training that need to be considered to meet the need? What skills will the carer need? What would make a good match?

Will we need to prepare our loved one for the care in any way?

Coming up with the answers to these types of questions may help the family make a decision about the requirements for care.  They may also help you get an idea of the carer you are looking for and what would make a great match. 

If you need any help answering any of the questions, we are more than happy to offer help and support in any way we can and you can find a deeper version of this where we've explored the different answers to the questions for you. 

My Support Network is how we support you. We're here to support you, we're always at the end of the phone (if we don't answer immediately it's because we're helping another client) or we can make a short trip to visit you in person. 

Call us on 0208 886 0686 or 07792939454

Or request a callback: