Home Care in Hove

Hove has 22 CQC registered home care agencies. 12 are rated Good, 2 Requires improvement, and 8 have not yet been rated. 10 of the 22 were last inspected more than three years ago.

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

Arranging and funding care at home in Hove

The care needs assessment

A care needs assessment is free, open to anyone who appears to need support whatever their savings, and normally carried out at home. A practitioner looks at mobility, washing and dressing, meals, medication, memory and how safely someone manages overnight, then records in writing what level of support is needed. Ask for a copy of that record, because it becomes the reference point for everything afterwards. A relative who provides regular unpaid help is entitled to a separate carer's assessment of their own, which is easy to overlook and often valuable.

Who pays for the visits

Help with the cost is decided separately through a financial assessment of income and capital. Brighton and Hove City 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 itself or make a direct payment so that a family chooses its own agency. Above the capital threshold the package is self funded, though the assessment and the impartial advice attached to it 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 turns 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, confirm how much notice is given before rates change, and check whether a minimum number of hours applies each week.

Choosing the right agency in Hove and what to look for

Reliability above everything

Families judge an agency on whether carers turn up 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. Ask how visits are recorded and whether relatives can see those records. An agency that answers plainly, without reaching for reassurance, is usually the one still arriving on time months later.

Reading the ratings on this list

Twelve agencies here are rated Good and two have been told they Require Improvement, with eight not yet rated. A large unrated group is ordinary in home care, where new agencies register regularly and then wait some time for a first inspection, so an absent rating is not a warning in itself. Where a report exists, read the safe and well led sections closely and note when inspectors visited. Where an agency has been asked to improve, ask what it has done since.

Fitting the visits around the day

Timing matters as much as the tasks themselves. A morning call that reliably arrives at half past ten is little use to someone who needs help getting up, and a fifteen minute visit is not long enough for a proper breakfast. Ask whether the agency will commit to a time window, whether it covers weekends and bank holidays, and how quickly a package can be increased if someone returns from hospital needing more support.

Related searches

• Care Homes in Hove
• Nursing Homes in Hove

Home Care near Hove

• Brighton
• Shoreham-by-sea
• Lancing
• Hassocks
• Peacehaven
• Burgess Hill
• Worthing