With so many care options available, it can be difficult to grasp which route is ideally suited to you or your loved one’s care needs. Here are some reasons why choosing a private carer may not be the correct choice for you.
The legal side
By hiring a private care assistant, who works solely for you and abides by your instructions, you may legally be classed as their employer, and with this brings certain responsibilities. If you employ an individual via a care agency, which has several staff members and offers care to more than one customer; the business will be the legal employer and deal with all the legal stuff for you.
If you are the employer, there are several things you must do, including operate PAYE, carry out DBS checks, provide a pension, holiday and Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), as well as organise insurance.
Absent carers
In the event of your private carer falling sick or jetting off to a paradise island for the week, you could be left without any replacement cover. With care agencies, they’ll be able to provide cover should your carer be absent from work.
Staff training and vetting
Private carers are often untrained and surprisingly, don’t need to be regulated to carry out care services. This means they don’t have a regulatory body to answer to and don’t have the procedures in place to ensure that the people they care for are kept safe from harm, abuse and neglect.
By appointing a care agency, you’ll have the added protection of continual staff training and vetting, along with a dedicated complaints department should you ever encounter any issues.
No going back
By assigning a private care assistant, you want to be able to trust that individual in your home, enjoy their company and, most importantly, receive a fantastic service. But quite often, things aren’t always as they seem, and you’re left in a predicament of finding a replacement or ‘tolerating’ that individual.
With most care agencies, they can easily appoint an alternative care assistant should you be dissatisfied. But with private carers, it’s a lot trickier to find a replacement – all of the admin that goes into finding a new carer lays solely on you and your family, which can be extremely time-consuming and stressful.
Continuous working
Unless you have more than one private carer, the same person doing all the work can be extremely tiring for the individual, whereas a care agency will supply a rotation of carers, avoiding fatigue of the carer.
It may seem that having one carer helps with continuity, but in reality, the one carer can become over-familiar with your loved one and complacency creeps in. Rather than seeing it as a job anymore, they start to feel like they are part of the family; the professional work standards that are needed on the job can be let to slip. A rotation of staff that a care agency brings maintains professional standards and ensures the correct line drawn between carer and the cared for.
Whilst it’s certainly not an easy experience, choosing care for you or a loved one doesn’t have to be stressful or complicated. If you would like to have a chat to discuss your situation or would like to discover how our care services can help you and/or your loved one, give Everycare a call on 01962 842548.