Desperate for domiciliary care

[mazzyk60]

Hi,
We are desperately seeking some advice. My husband and I are carers for his 93 year old mother who has Alzheimer's.
Life was going pretty well for us until earlier this year when the excellent care agency we employed pulled out of our town due to staff shortages.
The carers we now have are absolute rubbish as they have no understanding of mother's condition and treat her as a "normal thinking" person.
As we live in a rural town quality carers are in very short supply.
Social services have offered no help or support as we are "self funding" and right now we feel we have been set adrift with no help on the horizon.
We were wondering about employing private carers but would like to know the benefits and pitfalls of doing this for example how are sick leave absences and holidays covered,
We feel that putting her in residential care would be the last resort.
Any suggestions please as we are so stressed out with it all.

 

[sistermillicent]

Try this website for a start,
https://www.gov.uk/employing-staff
and see if there is a phone number for getting advice. There was a lot of help available for me for free when I was self employed for a while so I imagine there is help for those who employ someone for the first time....they want you to get it right!
If you want to find someone I suggest asking on your local Streetlife website or looking in a church magazine as you can find people who are freelance there.

I saw you had no responses so have tried to give a bit of an answer but it probably isn't what you really need.

 

[Kevinl]

Hi Mazzy, welcome to TP
You could advertise, presumably the former "good" carers from the old company are still out there somewhere local to you, I don't know the best place to advertise but if it's a small town then it might be as simple as the local newagent's window or asking around someone might know who they are.
New rules mean employing someone yourself is a whole lot more complicated, the old "informal" arrangements have been replaced with you now needing insurance, pension funds, maternity care, holiday pay the whole lot that a big company has to have, you could do it on the QT but I wouldn't recommend it.
There are agencies who for a fee will employ on your behalf and the carer is technically self employed, so you pay the agency, they take a cut and the rest goes to the self employed carer. This relieves you of any responsibility for them (morality of doing this aside, it is legal) so all you need is public liability insurance in case they have an accident at your mum's home.
K

 

[Lindy50]

Great answer, Kevinl, I was struggling to put this into words myself

Also just wanted to add, is there a local carers centre or carers forum near you? If there is, they may be able to give you the name of a 'third party agency', ie the kind of organisation that Kevinl describes.

Good luck, if you can crack the technicalities, I think this can be a great way of organising care

Lindy xx

 

[barry6521]

care help

you could try this site it has been a god send for me, google" care to be different"