To ensure a person’s well-being whilst also providing a good quality of life are the main aims of professional home care services, as well as enabling the person receiving the care is offered opportunities to meet others and enjoy a change of scene or daily routine.
Organising home care services can seem like an uphill struggle, fraught with waiting lists and numerous professional bodies and organisations to deal with.
At Premier Homecare, our simple guide to finding the best home care services in Bristol includes the following points:
Start with a Community Care Assessment, which will highlight whether financial help and support for the home care is available – this can be arranged by contacting the local Social Services Community Care department. You can find out more here.
Once the Assessment is completed, and if financial entitlement is awarded, there will be the option of Social Services organising the home care help for you – usually, they decide the care company to contract this out to.
The assigned Social Worker will also draw up a Care Plan, and assign finding an appropriate care company – this process can take up to three weeks, depending on the nature of the care provision required.
The Social Worker will also offer the option of funding to choose and organise your own care company – this option is called Direct Payments or a Personal Budget.
These options provide the freedom of choosing your own care company, as opposed to having it chosen for you.
If you elect to fund your care privately, then Private or Independent Care Agencies will provide a range of support, including help getting up, washing, dressing, meal preparation, cleaning, help with taking medication, shopping and going out for visits or appointments.
Care can be provided for time slots of half an hour across a 24-hour period, and might be delivered once a week or every day, depending on the care required.
There are a number of Care Agencies operating in the Bristol area, and all should be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to ensure that they meet regulatory standards.
Private Care Companies and Agencies can be found in the Nursing & Caring section of the Yellow Pages, on lists published by local Social Services, by searching online for terms such as ‘home care providers in Bristol’, searching industry websites such as The Good Care Guide, and by word-of-mouth recommendation.
Then it’s a case of ringing your chosen home care Agency and discussing your care needs. Remember to ask as many questions as possible and check out their website fully before contacting them. A home visit can be confirmed.
After you’ve met a representative from the home care Agency, it should be possible – given that you’re comfortable with what you’ve seen and heard – to then organise care requirements to start within a couple of weeks.
Most people do not realise that organising care is relatively easy when done privately, but there can be different timescales and levels of bureaucracy to negotiate when taking the route through funding via Social Services.
We’re able to set up an Assessment for a potential client usually within the same week, and care provision within a fortnight. Simple and stress-free.
Remember to carefully check the reliability, quality and standards offered by any home care Agency you contact – a good Agency will always be more than happy to respond to any questions or queries you might have.