Care services in your own home - West Midlands

If you need help around the home, a good option is to have a care worker come in to your home to help you.

Types of homecare available

Homecare comes in many forms and has many names used to describe it, including home help, care attendants and “carers” (not to be confused with unpaid family or friends who care for you).

Homecare can suit you if you need:

• personal care, such as washing or dressing
• housekeeping or domestic work, such as vacuuming
• cooking or preparing meals
• nursing and health care
• companionship

Homecare can be very flexible, in order to meet your needs, and the same person or agency may be able to provide some or all of these options for the duration of your care:

• long-term 24-hour care
• short breaks for an unpaid family carer
• emergency care
• day care
• sessions ranging from 15-minute visits to 24-hour assistance and everything in between

If you believe that you might benefit from some help at home, the first thing to do is to contact your social services department to ask for an assessment of your care and support needs. To contact social services, go to GOV.UK: find your local authority

If you are eligible for homecare services, the local authority may provide or arrange the help themselves. Alternatively, you can arrange your own care, funded by the local authority, through direct payments or a personal budget.

If you have chosen direct payments or a personal budget, or you aren’t eligible for local authority help and want to get care privately, you can arrange it in several different ways.

Questions to ask when using a homecare agency

The fees some agencies charge can be quite high. Before deciding to go ahead with an agency, you should ask questions about the fee and what it covers, including:

• Does the agency check references?
• What training and supervision do they provide?
• What is their complaints policy?
• Who will be responsible for insurance?
• Is there any out-of-hours or emergency contact if needed?
• Will they be able to provide staff if your own care worker is ill or away? (If an agency contracts to provide care every day, it must ensure that it does.)

With Secure Healthcare as your home care service provider, you will enjoy personalised service built around your needs. Secure Healthcare pride ourselves on treating people with the same care, kindness and dignity that we would expect our loved ones to be treated.

We pride ourselves on ensuring persons needing support are Safe, our care treatment and support helps you to maintain quality of life based on best available evidence, our staff involve and treat you with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. We ensure our services are responsive to your needs and our management ensure high quality care is provided based on an individuals needs.

If you wish to learn more about how we can support you, please contact us and let one of our advisers come to see you and your family for a more detailed plan on how we can support you.