Role of a visiting carer

Visiting carers

A visiting carer (also known as a daily carer or domiciliary care worker) is a carer that comes to a client’s own home for a set number of hours and often has specific tasks to complete whilst they are there. Just as with live-in care, the role of a visiting carer is to help the client with daily tasks and to support them emotionally. A visiting carer will work around the individual’s needs and schedules and can be a part-time or a full-time role visiting multiple clients each day.

What will a visiting carer do during an assignment?

Visiting carers are primarily on hand to support elderly and disabled adults with the tasks that they cannot physically do, things they may forgot to do, or jobs that they feel worried doing on their own

Clients requiring visiting care are normally more able, with lower care needs, than a live-in care client. Although when a visiting carer is needed to cover the breaks of a live-in carer, they should be equally well prepared to support clients who have more complex need too.

Often daily tasks will include:

• Helping a client with their morning and evening routine
• Personal care
• Prompting and witnessing the taking of medication
• Preparing meals
• Household tasks such as cleaning and laundry
• Companionship

This may extend to:

• Help with eating
• Helping the client with moving around the home
• Shopping and other errands
• Reminding the client about medication, or if trained, administering medication
• Continence care including catheter and bowel care
• Gastrostomy care including PEG feeding, stoma and urostomy care

A carer should only be expected to do jobs that they are trained to do or that have been agreed with the client or representative as part of their care plan.

Shift patterns

A visiting carer can spend anything from 30 minutes a week to a couple hours each day with a client; it varies greatly depending on the level of support needed. If the carer is employed by a care provider, they will have their contracted hours filled with multiple visits to a variety of local clients. If the carer is self-employed and working with multiple agencies, they will need to manage their various visits across the different agencies. If a self-employed carer works with a single agency however, the agency will schedule their clients in for them and assist them in working out travel times.

Travel times to and from assignments should always be taken into consideration. If a carer is late, this could mean that medication is not taken on time, or clients are stuck in bed for larger parts of the day. For this reason, visiting carers must be organised and punctual individuals. Sometimes however, the inevitable happens and trains are cancelled, or there’s unexpected traffic and being late is unavoidable. If this happens, it is the responsibility of the carer to let their care provider or agency know as soon as possible so they can inform the client or representative and make alternative arrangements if necessary. Self-employed carers would need to inform the client or representative directly.

When a carer signs up to an agency or applies for employment with a care company, they should be honest about the days and hours they want to work, to avoid disappointment on either side.

Breaks

Self-employed carer’s will determine their own break schedule depending on the assignments and clients they do and don’t take on. Carers employed by a regulated care provider will receive the legal breaks as set out in their contracts.

Amount of work

If a carer is employed by a care company, it will be outlined how many shifts they can expect either during the hiring process or in their contract, and it is rare that these hours are not met. Self-employed visiting carers will need to inform care agencies of their availability to ensure they are asked to attend enough clients.

It can be tempting for new carers to want to work 40 hours a week (full-time) to maximise their earnings, however, care work can be physically and emotionally tiring at first. Once clients and their routines are more familiar to a carer, things become easier and more work can be taken on.

Maximum hours

Most companies will have a cap on the maximum number of hours a carer can work in a week. Others will have rules around enforcing a break after several uninterrupted hours worked in a row.

Self-employed carers are generally able to work as often or as little as they like.

Uniform

Most employed visiting carers will be required to wear a uniform, usually a company issued tunic bearing the company’s logo. Self-employed carers are free to wear appropriate clothing to their client assignments.

Our next section looks at the earning potential of a professional carer and the possible paths a career in care can take you. Download our complete Guide to Becoming a Carer for free. Everything you need to know about becoming a carer in one handy pdf which you can print out or read digitally.