Home Care in Wirral

Wirral has 53 CQC registered home care agencies. 31 are rated Good, 3 Outstanding, 3 Requires improvement, and 16 have not yet been rated. 33 of the 53 were last inspected more than three years ago.

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

Choosing a Home Care Agency in Wirral and What to Look For

Care at home succeeds or fails on reliability far more often than on warmth. Agencies are rarely unkind; they are sometimes late, sometimes short staffed, and sometimes unable to send the same carer twice. Those are the things worth testing before a package starts rather than after.

What these agencies are registered to provide

All fifty three providers listed here are home care agencies, delivering personal care in a person's own home: washing, dressing, help to the toilet, prompting or administering medication, preparing meals and supporting safe movement about the house. Shopping, laundry and companionship are often available alongside, though it is the personal care the regulator inspects. None of them provide accommodation, so where someone cannot safely be left between visits, residential care usually has to enter the conversation.

What the local ratings show

Three agencies hold Outstanding: AJ and Friends, The Italian Lodge and Home Instead Wirral. Thirty are rated Good, including Helping Hands Wirral, Crystal Care, Icare Solutions (Wirral) Ltd, Professional Carers and Cherry Tree House. Four have been told they Require Improvement, and sixteen have no rating at all, which reflects recent registration rather than any finding against them. Where a rating exists, read the report itself and check when it was written. Where none exists, the checking falls to you, so ask the questions an inspector would ask.

The questions that predict how it will work

Ask how many different carers would attend over a fortnight and what happens when one calls in sick. Ask whether visits are timed around the person or around the round, what counts as a late call, and who telephones the family when one happens. Ask how medication is recorded and how a missed visit is noticed. For an unrated agency, ask when it registered, how long the manager has worked in care, how staff are trained and supervised, and whether you can speak to a family already using it.

Arranging Care and Understanding the Funding

The care needs assessment

The assessment is free, it is not means tested, and anyone who appears to need care can request one, including a relative acting on their behalf. It looks at washing, dressing, meals, medication and mobility, then records what help is needed and at which points in the day. Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council adult social care is the authority responsible for carrying out that assessment and for deciding what funded support follows from it. Ask for the written outcome, because an agency can quote against it far more accurately than against a conversation.

Who pays for what

A financial assessment then considers savings and income, and for care delivered at home the value of a property the person still lives in is disregarded. Below the national upper capital threshold the council contributes through a personal budget, which can be taken as a direct payment so that the family employs the agency directly. Attendance Allowance sits outside the means test and is worth claiming at the same time.

Understanding the charges

Agencies bill by visit length, and short calls usually work out dearer per hour than longer ones. Ask for written rates covering weekdays, weekends and bank holidays, check whether travel or mileage is added, and find out what notice is required to change a package once it has begun.

Related searches

• Care Homes in Wirral
• Nursing Homes in Wirral

Home Care near Wirral

• Prenton
• Birkenhead
• Wallasey
• Liverpool
• Bootle
• Ellesmere Port