Bringing a carer into your parent's home

The mug your parent always reaches for, the drawer where the tea towels live, the chair nobody else sits in: a home is full of habits that have never needed explaining. When a carer starts coming in, all of that is suddenly on show to someone new, and the arrangement can feel awkward for everyone at first. This page covers the practical and personal side of that start. It is general information rather than medical advice, and it can't tell you how your parent will take to it.

Make room for how unfamiliar it is

The Family Caregiver Alliance in the United States notes that many adults resist having strangers come into their home, and that some may experience a service as an intrusion on their privacy, a loss of independence or money badly spent. It also observes that taking help from someone unfamiliar can be difficult, and that trust between a parent and a new carer may need time to grow. A parent who doesn't want help at all is a different subject, taken up in When a parent refuses help.

Have someone familiar there at the beginning

The Family Caregiver Alliance suggests considering having a relative, or another person your parent trusts, present when a new carer first comes. NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence), in its guideline for England, asks services to introduce people to new home care workers, and to tell them ahead of time, with reasons, when staff will change.

Write down, with your parent, how they like things done

The Family Caregiver Alliance suggests writing a job description once you know what help is needed, and stresses that clarity makes for better understanding; it says this helps with an agency as well as with a carer you hire yourself. It also suggests showing the carer how things are usually done, so the help feels familiar. The Alzheimer's Association in the United States suggests describing your situation to a care service and saying what you would like from it. Your parent's own words can sit at the centre of any such note. NICE's guideline for England describes a care plan that covers the support needed for the person to live as they choose, and spells out the part family and other carers will play.

Guard privacy and dignity in the home

SCIE (the Social Care Institute for Excellence), a UK social care body, describes privacy as mattering a great deal during personal care, and also in a person's own space. It describes privacy as including time alone and in quiet, and keeping contact with other people private, and it holds that what a person chooses to keep private is to be respected. The Health Information and Quality Authority's (HIQA's) 2022 evidence review for Ireland found research describing good care at home as care that respects the home itself and disturbs it as little as it can. England's CQC (Care Quality Commission), in its 2024 guide, describes good home care as care where the person can feel confident their belongings are safe.

Raise problems while they are small

The Family Caregiver Alliance suggests keeping communication current and dealing with problems as soon as they come up, and, when working directly with a carer, writing out what isn't working and agreeing on solutions together. Where care comes through an agency and is rushed, late or missed, Independent Age, a UK older people's charity, suggests raising it first with the agency's manager, then making a formal complaint if that doesn't settle it; how guidance describes good handling of concerns is set out in What good care at home can look like. What happens with a formal complaint, and how providers are registered and overseen, differs by where your parent lives.

Take health questions to their doctor

Some things that come up once a carer is in the home may be about your parent's health rather than the arrangement itself. Those are worth bringing to their doctor or other health professionals.