Domestic Home Help

Home help can mean many things to people. In terms of home care though, home help involves a carer visiting to help with everyday household chores. Chores you may find difficult or simply don’t want to spend your precious time doing.

Home help makes lighter work of keeping on top of everyday household tasks and is usually one aspect of your individual care plan.

Typical household tasks a carer can help with, include:

• Making, changing, and washing bedding
• Washing and ironing clothes
• Dusting
• Hoovering
• Cleaning kitchens and bathrooms
• Help tidying and ordering items
• Changing and taking out bins

A domestic service usually involves a cleaner visiting you once or twice a week to take care of specified household tasks.

Home help as part of a care plan is different, in the sense that it is designed to support you to live well at home. Whilst a carer is visiting you to help you get dressed and have breakfast, they might also change and wash your bedding or clean whilst they are there.

There are many benefits to having home help as part of your care plan. The main one is that it enables you to keep on top of things, when perhaps, you may have struggled.

Certainly, as we age, it can take a little longer to do household chores and so having someone else take care of the trickier tasks is of benefit.

Your care plan will detail your preferences on frequency of tasks and your carer will treat your home with great care. It can be amazing how just having the ironing taken away or the bathroom cleaning removed from your list, can have an impact.

A person could need home help for several reasons. It might be that you live alone and find keeping on top of the house tricky, or maybe you’re not as agile as you once were.

As part of your assessment of need, Nayland Care, will consider all aspects of your life and the challenges you face in being able to live well at home. This includes whether you may benefit from having regular home help.

Our aim is to help you live independently at home rather than stepping in to take away all your chores. That’s why we work with you and your family, to create a plan that offers you just the right amount of home help.

This is a good question and one that we are asked quite a lot. The answer is determined by an assessment of need. Talking with you and your family, and visiting you at your home, we work out what you are able and comfortable doing and what housework you struggle with. We also consider what household tasks are a priority to you and whether there are any health and safety concerns. From there, a care plan is created that takes into consideration any home help you may need, with recommendations for visits.

Home help is available to adults struggling with everyday tasks. This could be cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, tidying spaces, hoovering or taking out the bins. This type of help is often referred to as domestic home help and sometimes domiciliary care.

The local authority (e.g., Suffolk County Council) will decide if you’re eligible for funded help by conducting a care needs assessment, the referral for which can be made by a GP, healthcare professional or carer.

Often, if you’re assessed as being eligible, you will also be able to receive other support at home too, which is why domestic home help carers will often carry out a range of caring duties, such as:

• Cleaning kitchens and bathrooms
• Dusting, hoovering and tidying
• Taking out the rubbish
• Washing and ironing
• Tending to personal care needs
• Preparing meals
• Helping a person in and out of bed

A good personal care plan that tends to the individual's care needs should include and respect the wishes of the person being cared for.
This same level of duty and care and applies to domestic home help.

Sharing how you like to keep your home, how frequently you like to change your bed and clean your bathroom etc.…, is important. After all, having your voice heard within your personal care plan, which may include domestic home help, promotes independence.

You need to be comfortable with the proposed routine and be able to alter things should your needs change. This is why it is important to choose a domestic home help provider that regularly reviews the support you require.

At Nayland Care, we try our very best to be as flexible as possible with our domestic home help Suffolk and Essex visits. We keep to the agreed routine, arrive when you expect us to, and always treat you and your home with the utmost respect.

The local authority (e.g., Suffolk County Council) will decide if you’re eligible for domestic home help and other home care services.

At Nayland Care, we make the process as simple as possible. Our experienced home care team will carry out a full care needs assessment to create a domestic home help plan for you. This happens after the local authority has made its assessment to see how much you can afford to pay towards the cost of services and whether they can meet your care needs.

If you are entitled to support, the local authority has a duty to meet your needs, but it can charge for services depending on your income and savings.

Alternatively, you may be eligible for NHS funding (if your care needs meet specific criteria), or you may choose to fund your care privately.

If funding privately, we will still need to carry out an assessment of your care needs to create a suitable individual home care plan. Here, we will discuss how much support you will need and how we can make the best use of our time at your home to avoid unnecessary costs.