What to expect from a good home-care agency?We know that choosing home care or live-in care is probably one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in later life.
Being able to understand what good looks like can help you to make choices about the provider you choose. It might also help you find out if you are getting what you should from a current supplier.
All home-care suppliers are governed by the CQC. The Care Quality Commission. We are proud of our overall good status, with Outstanding Care (after all, that’s what we’re here for).
When the CQC inspect home-care providers, they always base these inspections around five carefully chosen questions. These are:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
We thought we’d help you to see how Carefour/Live-In Care work under each of these headings so you can see what we’re all about and how we work closely with the CQC standards each day.
Is Carefour/Live-In Care safe?
At Carefour the first thing anyone joining the team does is undertake our Carefour Induction. We are committed to ongoing training and development, so much so that we created our own In-House Carefour Academy that trains our teams which teaches our teams the right mix of skills, behaviours and attitudes through interactive modular learning sessions, learning games, videos, quizzes, discussions and eLearning with our partner Grey Matter Learning. We support every member of the team to achieve their Care Certificate if they don’t already possess it.
We’re super proud of how much we invest to provide our teams with everything they need. We even drip feed Micro Learning modules into their own social media hub to keep the learning alive.
All our team are taught to make sure the client has as much freedom as possible to do the things they want to do – regardless of their disability or other needs. We are here to support and help you live your life as normally as you can. It’s important to note your dignity and rights as a human being come up repeatedly during training. We understand that home care or live-in care means we are with you in many different situations, but we always respect you as an individual.
We don’t rush our visits or care; we pay our teams for their travel time to avoid people being too rushed to do a brilliant job. All the team have the right mix of skills to make sure you are kept safe. This applies to you, your home, your belongings, and your environment overall.
We don’t just train our teams about care, we also get them to be on the lookout for anything else that could negatively impact one of our clients, so they’re all trained on topics such as bullying, abuse, neglect, and even financial abuse. We are there to look after you in every situation.
All the team know how to deal with any incidents or accidents quickly and openly. They follow a strict process and reporting procedure and any investigations necessary are triggered from that.
Depending on the level of care needed you may need medication provision and our teams are fully trained on this, working with your doctor and any care plan, including storage and dosages.
Is Carefour/Live-In Care effective?
One of the first things we do at Carefour/Live-in care is making sure you’re introduced to your carer, and that we’ve got the match right. We carefully listen to you at your initial conversation so that we can try to get a carer that you’ll have a good relationship with and forge a friendship. We chose them based on personality, skills, and experience for your needs.
When we work so closely with you, we may spot that there might need to be changed to the care you receive you would always be asked to give your consent in a way you can understand. If appropriate, we can involve your friends and family in decisions about your care to make sure we get it right.
One thing we are focused on is keeping you fit and healthy and one straightforward way to do this is by ensuring you eat and drink enough. We train all our teams on hydration and nutrition, healthy eating and even on common allergies.
Is Carefour/Live-In Care caring?
One thing we are extremely proud of at Carefour/Live-in care is the people we hire to care for you are always genuinely interested in you, your life and what it means to care for you.
We’ll make sure that our teams know about your background, likes and dislikes, hopes and needs. This would also include anything we need to know about your age, or disability and your gender identity, sexual orientation & race. We’ll always respect your religion or beliefs too. All our carers will make time to develop trusting relationships with you and are concerned for your wellbeing.
The nature of a carer is, of course, to care. We make sure we are providing the right people with regular reviews, probationary periods, spot checks, care plan reviews and through constant coaching from our home care manager.
Is Carefour/Live-In Care responsive to your needs?
At Carefour/Live-In Care we create a personal treatment and support schedule which is set out in a written plan that describes what all carers need to do to make sure you receive personalised care, that you have agreed to, and understand. We work with you to constantly review and update that plan so it’s always responsive to the needs toy have right now. It’s our job to spot when you may need something different or new, and a part of that means that we’re always looking out for you.
We don’t do this alone. We work with you, and your family and friends if it’s appropriate to make sure it reflects your personal choices. A fitting example here, mirroring our earlier comments about dignity & respect would be that you should have a choice about who provides you with personal care, such as help with washing and dressing. If you need to visit a doctor, or a hospital our teams plan this with you to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.
If at any point you have any concerns or even a complaint, the team know how to handle them, responsively, so that we immediately jump into action following our processes to rectify any situation quickly and fairly for you.
Is Carefour/Live-In Care well-led?
We take time to make sure that we recruit only the best people to join our family of carers. Everyone goes through a carefully screened interview process, a Carefour Induction and our carers know what is expected of them and are happy in their work. We actively check in our teams, we lookout for them as an employer, and from a well-being perspective. We understand that carers do an incredible, sometimes selfless job, and we work hard to keep them happy, so they do a fantastic job for you.
Our Office Team and Directors are hands-on and work in the business each day, they connect with our clients and our teams to make sure they know what is happening in their own business, are in touch with the team and are easily available if they’re support is required.
We train our managers to support all their teams. We provide a social hub to encourage our teams to network and stay in touch while they’re out & about delivering care. We communicate regularly and clearly with all the teams to keep them in the loop and up to date.
Our teams know they should report any concerns they have about the care that colleagues, carers, and other professionals give. We have a clear process that enables them to safely reach out for help if they need to. When this happens, they are supported, and their concerns are thoroughly investigated.
All the team and managers work effectively with others who may be involved in caring for you, such as your local council. We’ve educated or managers to know what their responsibilities are and to always be honest, including when things go wrong.
We would urge you to consider all the above options when choosing a home care provider, as these are the measures looked at by the Care Quality Commission.
Another wonderful way is to read real-life reviews and check for industry awards.
At Carefour we are incredibly proud to have been awarded as a Top 20 Homecare Provider 4 years in succession with Homecare.co.uk. We also score an incredible 10 out of 10 with them.
You can learn about that here:
https://www.homecare.co.uk/homecare/agency.cfm/id/65432224280
You can read some of our reviews here:
https://www.homecare.co.uk/homecare/agency.cfm/id/65432224280
Start the conversation here:
If you’d like to arrange an initial chat to discuss arranging care for yourself or for anyone else then please click the link below and complete the form, or alternatively give us a call on 01905 699699
https://carefour.co.uk/#contact-us
