Home Care in Gravesend

Gravesend has 31 CQC registered home care agencies. 12 are rated Good, and 19 have not yet been rated. 9 of the 31 were last inspected more than three years ago.

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

What home care in Gravesend involves and what to look for

The shape of a typical package

Home care is built out of visits rather than a place to live. A carer may come once a day to help someone wash and dress, or four times to cover medication, meals and settling at night. Packages commonly begin small and grow, and they can include help with shopping, laundry and getting out of the house as well as personal care. The pattern of calls, not the list of tasks, is usually what decides whether an arrangement works.

Reliability is the real test

Families judge an agency on whether carers arrive when they said they would and whether it is the same handful of faces each week. Ask how many different carers would attend across a fortnight, what happens when the regular carer is off sick, and how late a call has to run before the office telephones to say so. Ask too how visits are recorded and whether relatives can see those records.

Making sense of the ratings here

Of the thirty agencies listed, eleven are rated Good and one has been told it Requires Improvement, with eighteen not yet rated. A large unrated group is normal in home care, where new agencies register regularly and wait some time for a first inspection, so an absent rating is not a warning in itself. Where a report does exist, read the safe and well led sections closely and check when the inspection took place.

Getting an assessment and sorting out the funding

The care needs assessment

A care needs assessment is free, open to anyone who appears to need support whatever their savings, and usually carried out at home. A practitioner looks at mobility, washing and dressing, meals, medication and night time safety, then records in writing what is needed. Ask for a copy. A relative who provides regular unpaid help is also entitled to a carer's assessment of their own, which is easy to overlook.

Who pays for the visits

Funding is settled through a separate financial assessment of income and capital. Kent County Council is the authority responsible for both assessments in this area and for arranging funded support where someone is eligible, and it can either commission the care directly or offer a direct payment so that a family picks its own agency. Above the capital threshold the package is self funded, though the assessment and the advice remain available and are worth using.

What a package of visits costs

Home care is charged by the hour or by the visit, so the weekly total depends entirely on how often carers come and for how long. Very short calls often carry a higher hourly rate, and nights, weekends and bank holidays usually cost more. Ask for a written schedule of charges covering travel, cancellations and rising need, and confirm how much notice is given before rates change. It is also worth asking whether the agency charges a minimum number of hours each week and how quickly a package can be reduced again if needs improve.

Related searches

• Care Homes in Gravesend
• Nursing Homes in Gravesend

Home Care near Gravesend

• Tilbury
• Swanscombe
• Grays
• Longfield
• Dartford
• South Ockendon
• Stanford-le-hope
• Rochester
• Gillingham
• Swanley