What is home care?
Home care services can assist you or a loved one to continue to live independently in your own home by supporting individuals with a wide range of domestic tasks.
There are lots of home care services available, depending on what kind of help you need. Your local authority will decide if you're eligible for these services or for home carers or a personal assistant. The different categories of support services available to help you in your own home include:
Personal Care including regular hygiene upkeep
Meal preparation and medication prompting and recording
House cleaning and domestic tasks in the home (including shopping and prescription collection)
Assistance with manual handling and movements in the home
Domestic sit-in visits
Home care offers care without long-term commitment. For example, you may just need help with everyday tasks while you're recovering from a recent illness or hospital visit. When you're feeling better, you may not need the extra help anymore.
How do I arrange home care?
Ideally, arranging home care starts with getting a care needs assessment through your local authority/council. You shouldn't be charged for a care needs assessment/enquiry, and you're entitled to one regardless of your income and savings.
After the assessment, if you're eligible for support, you'll receive a notification of the chosen care provider and next steps from there. Once this has been communicate a meeting with the local authority will be arranged and a care plan agreed that sets out what needs you have and what help you could get to meet those needs.
If you don't meet the criteria for support, your local authority/council should give you information and advice on the other options available to you.
Will I have to pay for home care?
Most local councils charge for the services they provide in your home, but before charging you, they must work out how much you can afford to pay.
If you had a care needs assessment, you'll also have a financial assessment to work out whether you're entitled to help with the cost of your care.
When the council is working out how much you can be charged, they must make sure you're left with a minimum level of income for day-to-day costs, known as your 'Minimum Income Guarantee' (MIG). You must also be left with money for housing-related costs, like rent.
As a home carer with Avenue you’ll be visiting our service users within your local area and typically assisting them with the following tasks; Medical administration prompts, personal care, meal preparation and housework, mobility requests – assisting service users mobility with the use of hoists and aids typically transferring them from beds and chairs to bathrooms and vice versa. Avenue carers also support our service users with appointments and social engagements as well as assisting with palliative/end of life care.
Runs and rota’s differ in each of our areas depending on the service users requirements and we do facilitate individual care runs as well as full double up runs in all areas. Typically there may be one or two “double-up” visits per shift.
Typically our morning shift starts at 7am and finishes at 2pm and our afternoon/back shift starts at 4pm and finishes at 10.30pm. New staff are offered a contract that is based on their weekly availability so that you know when you’ll be working on a weekly basis, there is always the opportunity to pick-up extra shifts should that be desired.
No, all our staff are equipped with a uniform/rucksack which contains unique badge identification and also all the necessary PPR required for the role. Additional PPE can be collected FOC from our localised offices.
Avenue operate a 24/7 emergency on-call service whereby an experienced member of our care management team is always a phone call away to support and queries that staff need answered. This service is activated midweek 5pm to 8.30am and all weekend should you need any assistance or re-assurance.
Yes, we ask all new members of staff to complete this. Our training managers cater for new staff that have had no care experience and also qualified staff that have a history of experience in social/home care.
Our carers typically work on a two week fixed rota which means working every second weekend. Avenue support Full-time, Part-time and sessional contracts for our staff.
Our carers work across the East of Scotland in localised areas. Avenue commit to settling new care staff into the same rota/runs for a minimum of two months and we can also support carer relocations.
No, our carers pay for their own travel and we can support annual mileage claims to HMRC.
All our carers have to complete our induction training and get signed off by our recruitment team - completing necessary background and reference checks as well as award of a PVG from disclosure Scotland
