Five Common Misconceptions About Homecare
There are various feelings we have when we think about home care for ourselves or a loved one. These feelings often lead to some common misconceptions about home care among both those who need the care and the relatives who may be finding or organising the care.
These are the 5 common misconceptions about home care.
1 – Carers are unskilled
Carers come from a range of backgrounds, often as a choice to change careers later in life. These carers might have been engineers, nurses, or business owners. There are also younger carers who are starting out and wish to build a career in health and social care, and students taking nursing or adult social care qualifications who want to gain real experience.
Many care workers will have done or are progressing their health and social care qualifications. They also go through training and professional development in their role. It is important that they are always up to date with their knowledge, and they are dedicated and trained individuals.
Some senior carers are trained to perform more specialist tasks such as tracheostomy or catheter care and management.
The kind of skills a care worker has include soft skills such as:
- Empathy and compassion
- Understanding when someone needs encouragement or comforting
- Ability to deal with an emergency
- Communication skills
- Knowing about how to preserve a person’s dignity
- Supporting people with long term conditions like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s Disease.
2 – The Carer will take over
A detailed, comprehensive care and support plan is always completed with each client, with their family and friends involved where needed and wanted. The care planning process enables the home care provider to determine an individual’s needs, as well as to discover more about the person, what they like, what they dislike, and what their goals and lifestyle choices are.
A care or support worker will align to the care plan, their job is to encourage independence and help where help is needed. You will always have choice and control over your own care and support, or that of your loved one.
3 – A stranger in the home will be uncomfortable
It can be a big change and an invasion of your privacy to have a carer’ in your home for the first time. Carers understand these daunting feelings experienced by someone who is new to receiving home care, supported living, or complex care, and will be respectful of these feelings.
They will take great care to ensure you are comfortable with them. People usually become accustomed to their carers or support workers fairly quickly and start to form meaningful relationships with each other. However, if the match is not quite right, we have the flexibility to supply alternative staff.
4 – Home care is expensive
Home care is less expensive than a residential care facility. Residential care can cost anything upwards of £1,200 a week. Moving to a new or strange place can sometimes be distressing or upsetting. Home care allows people to remain in their own comfortable and familiar surroundings. It also makes it more possible to keep any pets, and enables married couples to stay together, and remain within their own local community.
Home care allows the person to remain in their own comfortable and familiar surroundings, and will not have to sell their home. It also makes it possible to keep any pets, and enables married couples to stay together, and remain within their own community.
Private home care can range in cost per hour. Because it is by the hour, it means you can be more flexible, increasing or decreasing support as and when required.
5 – Home care is only needed following illness or injury
There doesn’t need to be an illness or injury for a person to take home care services. Some people receive a home care service for companionship, while others choose home care because doing things has become more difficult due to ageing or ailment.
As home care services can be offered at times and frequencies to suit each individual person, it is often provided at earlier stages. This can also prevent more serious things from happening; home carers are able to monitor safety in the home, as well as look out for any signs of illness or injury, which otherwise may not always be detected, which may be due to occurrences such as trips and falls etc.
