Department 10
A department for care providersFor people who run services
For care providers
Practice guides for people who run home care services: planning visits and routes, keeping the same carers with the same people, care records every carer can pick up, and keeping families informed with the person’s say.
Guides in this department
Practice guides for the people who run home care services.
Each guide names its sources, says what it deliberately doesn’t claim, and hands back to your service’s own policies, its regulator and professional advice where it operates.
- Care records every carer can pick upWhen each carer writes visit notes differently, the next carer has less to go on. Ways services agree what goes in a record, keep it in the person's home where everyone involved can see it, and keep the person able to read it.
- Keeping families informed, with the person's sayMany families want to hear about visits and changes, and the person receiving care decides what is shared. How services agree that with each person, write it into the plan and look at it again.
- Keeping the same carers with the same peopleGuidance on home care puts weight on continuity of carers. How services build rotas around familiar faces, and what to do when a regular carer is away.
- Planning for missed and late visitsMissed and late visits are worth planning for. Practical ways services keep a planned rota, set up back-up plans and keep the person informed when a visit moves.
- Planning visit routes across an areaTravel between visits is part of planning a day of home care. Ways to build travel time into the plan, keep the person's preferred times at the centre, and be open with staff about how route information is used.
- Keeping a record of each visit against what was agreedWhat guidance from Canada, Ireland and England says about recording each visit promptly and against the person's plan, the person's right to make their own decisions, including refusing a service, and telling care workers openly how information about their visits is used.
- Looking at each person's week as a wholeReading one person's visits as a whole week, against what was agreed with them. What guidance says about agreeing visit times with the person, timing visits around their day, and talking through any change to when visits are made.
- Booking visits that need two care workersWays a service can coordinate a visit that needs two care workers, arrange cover in advance and keep the visit record accurate. Whether a visit needs two workers, and how it is carried out, is for the service to decide.
- Writing care plan tasks a care worker can follow, in the person's own wayWays to write care plan tasks clearly enough to follow, with the person's own priorities, routines and preferences in them, and with the person taking part in shaping the plan. Who writes the plan differs by where a service operates.
- Who on your staff needs which part of a person's recordAccess to a person's record that follows the work each person on the staff does, looked at again when someone joins, moves or leaves. What privacy guidance describes, including explaining to the person how their information is used.
- Supporting new care workers through their first shiftsWhat guidance says about the start of a new care worker's time with a service: working alongside a colleague before working alone, introducing themselves to the people they support, and knowing who to ask for support, including out of hours.
Articles in this department
No articles here yet.
Articles read around the questions the guides answer. When this department has them, they will sit here under their own count.
The guides above are published and stand on their own. Articles for this department will follow the same standard when they come: shorter, dated, and with their sources named.
All articles, across departmentsHow we source
Carefulness, made visible.
Named, not counted
Each guide names its sources and tags each one Primary or Secondary. It never counts sources at you.
Under-claiming on purpose
Where no authority sets a threshold, we say so rather than inventing one.
Naming the limit
Every guide names where its authority ends, and who to ask instead.