Self-funding care at home: running it like a professional service

1. Why self-funders go direct

Agency home care in the UK is charged by the hour at a rate that pays the carer, the office, the travel, the insurance and the margin. Employ the carer yourself and the same money buys more hours, with carers your parent gets to know. The trade is that you take on what the office did: the rota, the record, the hours, the paperwork. Most families take the trade without realising what the office was doing.

2. The standard an agency is held to

A registered provider must be able to show, for every call: that it was planned, that a carer attended and when, what they did, what medicines were given, and that the person was safe. Inspectors read the notes and the medication charts. Families are not inspected, but the reasons for the standard do not go away when the council does. The dose still needs recording. The fall still needs writing down. The next carer still needs to know. Running the care to the agency's standard is not bureaucracy; it is what the standard was for.

3. You are still an employer

Self-funding does not change employment law. A carer who works your hours in your home on your instructions is your employee, with the right to a written statement, the minimum wage, paid holiday, a payslip and a pension where eligible. You need employer's liability insurance. None of this is onerous, but all of it depends on knowing the hours each carer worked, and that is the record most self-funders do not keep.

4. When the hospital asks

The moment the arrangement is tested is usually an admission. The ward asks what medication has been taken and when, how mobile the person was last week, whether they have been eating, when they last fell. A family with a record answers in a minute and the discharge plan is built on facts. A family without one answers from memory, and the hospital, reasonably, treats the home arrangement as unknown. That can mean a longer stay, a different discharge, or a conversation about whether home is still right.

5. What it costs against agency care

The Personal plan is £30 a month for the household, or £288 a year. Against agency rates, that is less than a single hour of care a month. It covers up to three loved ones and fifteen carers, the carer app, the family app, setup and support, with no VAT added and no setup fee. For a family paying for twenty or thirty hours of care a week, it is the smallest line in the budget and the one that protects all the others.

6. How Carelo's Personal plan does it

The system agencies use. Carelo is the care management platform UK domiciliary care providers run. The Personal plan is that system with the company parts removed and the pages built around your parent.

A rota the carers carry. Plan the week once. Each carer's Carelo app shows their own calls and updates when you change them.

Check-in at the door. The time and the location of every arrival and departure. Hours per carer come from the stamps and export as timesheets for whoever runs your payroll.

Notes and medication at every call. What was done and seen; every dose as given, prompted, refused or not required, with initials. The next carer reads it; the family sees it the same day.

A late call you hear about at the time. If nobody has checked in by the planned time, your home page says so.

Everything printable. The visits, the notes, the MAR chart and the hours for any period, for the GP, the hospital or your own peace of mind.