Home Care in Southam

Southam has 152 CQC registered home care agencies. 59 are rated Good, 1 Outstanding, 9 Requires improvement, and 83 have not yet been rated. 56 of the 152 were last inspected more than three years ago.

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

What home care in Southam involves and what to look for

How support at home is actually bought

Care at home is purchased by the hour or the visit rather than by the week, which makes it flexible and also makes it easy to underestimate. The one hundred and fifty providers listed here are registered with the Care Quality Commission to deliver personal care in someone's own home, covering help with washing, dressing, medication, meals and getting safely in and out of bed. Packages commonly start at one visit a day and build from there, with some agencies offering longer calls, overnight support or live in arrangements. Establishing how much support is genuinely needed, and at which points of the day, is the work that has to come before comparing providers.

Making sense of the ratings

Among these agencies the inspection outcomes recorded are Outstanding, Good and Requires Improvement, together with providers carrying no rating because they registered too recently to have been inspected. Treat the word as a way of ordering a long list rather than a decision in itself, and check when it was awarded, since agencies change management and lose or gain staff quickly. The report is where the useful detail sits, particularly on whether visits ran to time, how medicines were recorded, what training carers received and how the agency responded when something went wrong. Missed and rushed calls are the complaints that recur most often in this part of the sector, so read those passages closely.

Questions worth asking before you sign

Ask how many different carers a person is likely to see across a fortnight, and whether the agency will commit to a small regular team. Ask what happens when a carer is off sick, how late a call has to be before the office rings to say so, and who answers the telephone at the weekend. Ask about the minimum call length, whether travel time is included in what you pay, and how the rate changes at evenings, weekends and bank holidays. Ask to see a sample care plan and find out how often it is reviewed. Where possible, meet the carers who would actually be doing the visits rather than only the manager who sells the service.

Getting an assessment and working out the funding

Asking for a care needs assessment

Anyone who appears to need care and support is entitled to an assessment, and it is carried out by Warwickshire County Council Adult Social Care as the authority responsible for assessing need and agreeing funded support. It is free, does not depend on savings, and can be requested by the person concerned, a relative or a professional such as a general practitioner. The practitioner will go through washing, dressing, mobility, medication, eating and safety around the home, and will often identify equipment or adaptations that reduce how much hands on help is required. Carers may request an assessment in their own right at the same time.

Paying for it, and the direct payment option

Funding is decided separately from need. A financial assessment of income and capital establishes what the person contributes towards the cost and whether public funds meet any part of it. Hourly rates differ between the agencies listed here according to the length of the call, the time of day and the complexity of the support, so ask for a written schedule of charges and check how evenings and weekends are priced. Where support is funded, ask Warwickshire County Council about a direct payment, which lets a family choose and arrange the agency themselves within an agreed budget rather than accepting whoever is commissioned.

Home Care near Southam

• Leamington Spa
• Warwick
• Daventry
• Rugby