With the costs of residential care being very high, more and more people are looking to receive specialist home care services. This is often delivered by a specialist homecare agency, who employ carers with specific training and expertise in providing care in the home.
Picking between specialist, and paid for, home care services agencies can be a difficult thing to do. That is why we have created a care agencies search facility to allow you to find a specialist carer in your area. Just put in details below of where you are and what type of specialist care agencies you are looking for.
You will find that there are likely to be a range of home care agencies in your area. With the growth in demand for home healthcare we are also seeing an increase in home care providers. Therefore, you will find that there are many agencies there that have fewer than 20 carers available. There are of course the larger home healthcare agencies and you will find that many of these will be franchises.
We have written a helpful 5 step guide to picking a home care agency. You can find it here.
Broadly, the 5 steps can be broken down as follows:
Have a think about what help you want from the home healthcare provider. You will find that there is a range of different support available. Most often you will find that the home care help is given by care attendants personal assistants of carers.
The areas where people most often want support is with help looking after their personal care and hygiene, help doing their weekly shopping, assistance around the house with cleaning and tidying and helping to cook meals. Sometimes however, all you need is companionship.
Whilst you are in the process of looking at care genies, you should also make sure that you contact your local social services and ask them to assess your care needs. Read more information about care needs and financial assessment.
Once you go through the assessment process, your local authority will outline what support and help they can give you and importantly what finical assistance they will provide.
If you chose not to take the support your local authority provide, you are free to approach care agencies yourself and choose your own home care. Your local authority will then either fully or partly fund this.
This will be done through making ‘direct payments’ or through a ‘personal budget’. The purpose of this is to help tie you control of your own care.
Estimating how your home care services cost is important you need to ensure you are spending your money wisely.
The cost of the care agencies do differ, with costs ranging from £10 per hour to sometimes above £20 per hour.
The costs often depend on the type of support you want and how regularly you need it. We have built a care cost calculator to help you estimate your home care services cost and the costs of your home healthcare. You can find the care cost calculator here.
Once you have done the above you can search for care agencies using our directory facility below. This will lost all the local care agencies in your area.
Once you have identified 3 or 4 care agencies to speak too, it is important that you, with your support from family and friends have a detailed conversation with the short listed home healthcare providers. This is important to ensure that they can give you the home care services and support that you need. There are also a number of standard question you should ask.
Below are questions you should ask of the agency, your care worker and your needs.
For interest, here is our blog on the 10 qualities you need in a carer.
More information on all the 5 steps can be found here.
