The part of care people find hardest to arrange
Most families manage shopping and cooking between them for a long time. What tips the balance is usually personal care: the morning someone cannot get out of the bath safely, or the point where a daughter realises she is now the person washing her father. It is the service people put off arranging the longest, and it is the one that makes the most difference to how well someone lives day to day.
Done properly it is unremarkable. Someone arrives, they know the routine, they do what needs doing without commentary, and they leave. Dignity in personal care is mostly a matter of competence and not making it a moment.
What personal care covers
- Washing, bathing and showering, including help in and out safely
- Dressing and undressing, and choosing what to wear
- Grooming: hair, shaving, oral care and skin care
- Continence support, catheter and stoma care where needed
- Help getting up in the morning and settling at night
- Moving and handling, transfers and support with mobility
- Applying creams and monitoring skin integrity, particularly pressure areas
Personal care is rarely booked on its own. It usually sits alongside medication support, a hand with housework and meals, and, where someone is alone a lot, companionship.
The same faces. The single most common complaint about home care agencies is a different carer every visit, which for personal care is genuinely undignified. We are a small service, and keeping the same small group of carers with the same client is the whole point of being small.
Visits from half an hour upwards
A personal care visit can be half an hour in the morning to get someone up, washed and dressed. It can be four visits a day: morning, lunch, tea and bed. It can be a live-in arrangement where someone is there all the time. What we will not do is agree to fifteen-minute visits, because you cannot wash and dress an adult with dignity in fifteen minutes.
Where needs are higher, or where there is a stroke, a physical disability, PEG feeding or a long-term condition involved, that is our complex care service, and the carers who attend are trained for it specifically.
Getting started
We visit and assess at home, at no charge and with no obligation. We want to meet the person who needs care, see the bathroom, understand the routine, and hear what they actually want rather than what everyone assumes they want. Family are welcome in that conversation, and so are district nurses, GPs and social workers where they are involved.
You get a written care plan setting out who comes, when, what they do and what to do if something changes. It is reviewed as needs change, which they will.
Questions families ask
Will it be the same carer each time?
As far as it is humanly possible, yes. We build a small consistent team around each client so the person washing and dressing someone is not a stranger. Holidays and sickness happen, but you will know in advance rather than opening the door to someone unexpected.
Can we ask for a female carer?
Yes. Preferences about the gender of the person providing personal care are entirely reasonable and we will match accordingly wherever we can.
My father refuses to accept help. What do we do?
This is extremely common and it is usually about control rather than the washing. We often start with something less loaded, such as a hand with shopping or a sit-in visit, and let personal care follow once there is a relationship. Rushing it tends to entrench the refusal.
What is the shortest visit you do?
Half an hour. We do not offer fifteen-minute personal care calls because they cannot be done properly.
Talk it through with Jackie
No call centre and no obligation. Tell us what you are dealing with and we will tell you honestly whether we can help.