For care providers
Keeping families informed, with the person's say
Many 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.
At the first meeting, before anyone opens the rota, the person who is about to receive care can be asked a plain question: who would they like to hear about their visits, and what would they like those people to be told? The answer might be one son and nobody else, the whole family, or no one at all. This guide is about building a service's contact with families around that answer. It states no rule on what any service may share, and it is not legal or health advice.
Ask the person first, and go by what they say
In England, NICE's home care guideline recommends that a service asks each person whether they want family or other unpaid carers, or an advocate, to help plan their care and support. The same guideline for England recommends that the service then respects the choice the person makes.
In Ireland, HIQA and Safeguarding Ireland's guidance for staff describes the steps before anything personal is passed on: asking for the person's consent, apart from limited exceptions, and making clear to them why it is going and who will receive it.
The family side of the same principle is set out in Respecting their independence and choices.
What we don’t claim here
We don’t say what the rules require where your service operates, and we don’t set a standard of our own. Requirements differ from place to place, so we don’t imply one.
Who can weigh it: your service’s own policies, its regulator and professional advice where it operates. Where to take it →
Write down what was agreed, where staff will find it
The care and support plan, in NICE's guidance on people's experience of adult social care in England, should record clearly who the person wants involved, whether relatives, friends, advocates or unpaid carers, and in what way. NICE's home care guideline for England says the home care plan a service writes should record the role family and other unpaid carers will take on, and should note that it will need reviewing if those carers' own circumstances change.
Agree with the person how families hear about visits
The names of the relatives who hear, and the way they hear, both come from the person's answer, written into the plan.
Explain confidentiality plainly
If a person wants relatives involved, NICE's guidance for adult social care services in England recommends going through the principles of confidentiality, discussing with the person and their family what being involved would look like, and sharing information on the terms agreed.
When a relative raises a question about the person's health, even alongside news of a visit, staff can point out that it is worth bringing to the person's doctor or care team, on the person's terms.
Look at the agreement again
NICE's guidance for adult social care services in England recommends revisiting how the person wants others involved at regular intervals, and any time a review is asked for. Guidance for staff in Ireland from HIQA and Safeguarding Ireland says that staff should understand a person's wishes and preferences, and review them regularly, so they can support the person's autonomy in making decisions.
Check your approach against your own policies, your regulator and professional advice where you operate
The guidance in this piece comes from England and Ireland, and it speaks for those places. Where the exceptions to asking for consent lie, and what a service may share with family and on what basis, depend on the law and practice where your service operates, and nothing here sets a rule for any of them. Your own policies, your regulator and professional advice where you work are the place to settle those questions.
When to ask a professional
This guide stops where your service’s own judgment starts. Take what fits back to its policies, its regulator and professional advice where it operates.
Sources
The outside sources this guide draws on.
Primary: Taken from the official source itself, and cited directly.
- PrimaryNICE (England), Home care: delivering personal care and practical support to older people living in their own homes (NG21), recommendations 1.3.11 and 1.3.13, 17 September 2015
- PrimaryNICE (England), People's experience in adult social care services: improving the experience of care and support for people using adult social care services (NG86), recommendations 1.1.14, 1.1.15 and 1.3.12, 20 February 2018
- PrimaryHIQA and Safeguarding Ireland (Ireland), Guidance on a Human Rights-based Approach in Health and Social Care Services, 2019
More in this department
How 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.
Holding back
Where a part isn’t confirmed, a guide runs shorter and says what is missing.
Naming the limit
Every guide names where its authority ends, and who to ask instead.