Asking a care provider how it keeps families informed

A new care arrangement begins, and the first visit takes place in your parent's front room. How you will hear about those visits, and about any change to the visits, is something you and your parent can raise with the provider before the arrangement settles in. This page gathers questions from published guidance that the two of you might put to a provider together.

Questions to put to a provider

Begin with the visits. Among the questions England's NHS suggests people may want to ask a home care agency is whether the paid carer will let them know about a delay or a late arrival. NICE's home care guidance in England recommends that home care workers get in touch with the person, or their carer, if they will be late or can't make a visit, and you and your parent can ask a provider how it handles that.

Then there is reaching the provider. England's NHS also suggests people may want to ask an agency how to get in touch with it in the daytime and outside office hours. In a tip sheet on choosing in-home care for someone living with Alzheimer's or another dementia, the US Alzheimer's Association suggests asking an agency who is available if problems come up.

And there is who holds it all together. NICE's home care guidance in England suggests considering a named care coordinator, meaning one person drawn from the people delivering care, whose role includes helping everyone delivering that care stay in regular contact with one another. Whether a provider names someone like that is a question to ask, not a test to pass.

A provider that keeps a family informed by phone, or by a note left in the home, is answering these questions as fully as one that sends updates in writing.

For the wider choice there is Questions to ask when choosing a carer or agency, for the arrival of a carer there is Bringing a carer into your parent's home, and there is more in the hub's Getting help at home department.

Bring your parent into it

Independent Age, a UK charity, says a home care agency should let the person receiving care know about any issues relating to their care. NICE's home care guidance in England recommends that people are asked whether they would like carers or advocates involved in planning their home care, and that what they choose is respected. An advocate is someone who speaks up for a person. In its information for the public on home care in England, NICE tells people they should be in charge of deciding what support they get, though they can ask a family member or carer to help. That is why these are questions for you and your parent to ask together.

We think your parent should decide what their family sees, and you can ask any care provider how it makes that possible.

Your parent's say over what the family sees takes up that conversation on its own.

One more question to ask

You can ask a care provider whether it shares visit updates with families, and how.

WeHomeCare makes software that home care providers can use to plan, carry out and record care visits.

Families do not sign up to WeHomeCare themselves; care providers use it.

What a provider may pass on to family, and on whose say, varies with where your parent lives, so that is a question for the provider too.

For families

How WeHomeCare is set up differs from one care provider to another, so it is worth asking a provider which parts it uses.

WeHomeCare can be set up so care providers share a visit timeline, visit updates, messages, photos and videos, and reports with families.

The section's About page sets out these statements in one place.