Home Care in Farnborough

Farnborough has 19 CQC registered home care agencies. 9 are rated Good, 1 Outstanding, 2 Requires improvement, and 7 have not yet been rated. 10 of the 19 were last inspected more than three years ago.

Source: Care Quality Commission register, kept up to date as ratings change.

What home care in Farnborough involves and what to look for

A package of care is really a set of promises about time: someone will arrive at eight, someone will come back at teatime, and someone will notice if things start to change. Judging an agency means judging how reliably those promises are kept.

Reading a patchy set of ratings

One agency here is rated Outstanding, nine are rated Good, two carry Requires Improvement and seven have no rating yet. Inspectors comment on punctuality, staff training and supervision, medicines records and how the office responds when something goes wrong, which is exactly what families notice in the first month. Where an agency is rated Requires Improvement, read what was found, check the date and ask directly what has changed since. Where no rating exists, ask how long the agency has operated, who manages it and whether the people behind it have been inspected elsewhere.

The questions worth asking first

Ask how many different carers will visit over a fortnight, because continuity matters more than any other single factor. Ask what happens when a regular carer is ill, how late a visit may run before the office telephones, and who answers the phone at the weekend. Ask how the care plan is written, how often it is reviewed, and whether you can meet the carers before they begin. Ask as well how quickly the package could be increased if someone came home from hospital needing more help than before. Ask what the agency does when it cannot staff a new client reliably, because a provider willing to say no is usually one that keeps its promises to everybody else.

Getting an assessment and arranging the funding

The assessment establishes what care is considered necessary, and every conversation about money afterwards refers back to it.

The care needs assessment

An assessment is free, is not means tested and is open to anyone who appears to need care. It looks at getting up, washing, dressing, meals, medication, moving safely about the house and coping alone in the evening, and produces a support plan setting out the hours considered necessary. London Borough of Southwark Adult Social Care carries out that assessment and the financial assessment that follows it. A relative providing regular support can request a carer's assessment in their own right, which sometimes leads to help that would otherwise be missed.

What home care costs and who contributes

Care at home is charged by the hour or by the visit, with higher rates at weekends and on bank holidays. Where the financial assessment finds savings below the national threshold, the council contributes towards the cost, and that money can be taken as a direct payment so the household selects its own agency. Above the threshold the arrangement is private. Ask for the full rate card in writing, including travel charges, minimum visit lengths and notice periods, and ask how quickly hours can be reduced again if someone recovers, because flexibility in both directions is what keeps an arrangement affordable.

Related searches

• Care Homes in Farnborough
• Nursing Homes in Farnborough

Home Care near Farnborough

• Camberley
• Aldershot
• Fleet
• Farnham
• Bagshot
• Crowthorne
• Woking
• Guildford
• Bracknell
• Ascot