Dogs, driving and the extras: what carer insurance actually covers

This is for carers who get asked to do more than the care plan covers: walk the dog, drive someone somewhere, take on an extra job on the side. Five calls to our team show what happens when carers say yes, say no, or find out too late what’s covered and what isn’t. None of it is complicated once you know the rules. Almost nobody checks them first.

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The situation carers are in

A care visit rarely stays inside its own edges. A client asks a carer to pop to the shops, feed a pet, or help move something, and most of the time nobody thinks of it as anything extra. The trouble starts when the extra task involves a car, or something in a client’s home gets damaged while a carer is helping. Whether anyone is covered then depends on facts that are easy to get wrong, as one call below shows even PrimeCarers got wrong.

Work booked and paid for through PrimeCarers is covered by PrimeCarers’ insurance. Work a carer arranges for herself, outside the platform, for cash or extra hours agreed privately, is not, so she needs her own public liability insurance, cover that pays out if someone or something is harmed by her work. Car insurance is separate again: business use cover lets a carer use her own car for work journeys, and hire and reward cover, a further type, is needed only if she is ever paid mileage for driving someone.

PrimeCarers is an introductory platform and does not provide, manage, supervise or clinically assess care. Clients remain responsible for checking carer documentation, interviewing carers, checking suitability for their specific needs, and agreeing the scope of care directly with the carer.

Driving for extra cash: what “hire and reward” means

One client used his booked hours to help him keep working as a delivery driver. He asked his carer, in a private message rather than through the platform, to also drive him on his delivery rounds, in her own car, for extra pay. She agreed at first, then pulled out less than 48 hours before she was due to start, telling him she had learned she would need hire and reward cover to be paid mileage for driving him, on top of her ordinary business insurance, and that she didn’t have it.

Hire and reward cover is a separate add-on to car insurance, needed by anyone paid to carry a passenger or goods in their own car, on top of standard business use cover. Business insurance alone usually isn’t enough. Without it, driving someone for payment can end with a car seized and points on a licence.

When the client called our founder, James, he initially thought business insurance covered it alone, an understanding he said every other private carer he had spoken to shared. The client had researched the rule and sent through what he found: hire and reward cover is required whenever money changes hands for a journey, a requirement that, according to his research, goes back decades. James checked it and agreed the client and the carer were right.

Given I’ve not looked into this very seriously for a while, it’s quite possible, even probable, that my understanding is not accurate.

The job was reopened for a new carer, and James said PrimeCarers would update its own guidance and let carers know. This story is here because a private arrangement, for cash, outside a booked visit, can trigger insurance rules that are easy to miss, rules PrimeCarers itself had not fully understood. The carer who checked first, and pulled out rather than break the law, made the right call, even at a cost to her.

Our guide to what car insurance a home carer needs and our page on carer car insurance go into more detail. Our article on what carers lose by going direct looks at private arrangements like this one more widely.

Dog walking: fine, once it’s on the books

A carer working hourly visits for an elderly client told our team one afternoon that she would not walk the client’s dog or drive her anywhere, having neither the right cover nor the comfort for either. In the same call she learned why her pay looked lower than expected: she had assumed PrimeCarers added a fee on top of whatever she charged, when in fact she sets her own rate and PrimeCarers takes a percentage, a commission, out of it. Nobody had explained either point before.

The next day she called back and told James she had, in fact, walked the dog that morning, the first of the client’s carers to try it. It took the best part of an hour, and the client, who struggled to get out and walk the dog herself, was delighted.

I did it today. I was so brave. I’m trying to get used to it, because I’ve never done it before.

Because the walk added close to an hour to a two hour visit, our team booked her hours up to three a day straight away, ahead of the coming bank holiday, on condition she confirmed the arrangement with the client the next morning.

The difference between the two calls is not that she stopped being careful, but that the walk became a booked, paid part of her visit, agreed with the client and put through PrimeCarers, not a private favour between the two of them. Work booked this way is covered by PrimeCarers’ insurance, unlike a private arrangement such as the driving above. Taking on an extra task is still a carer’s own decision. If in doubt, ask before agreeing, not after.

Our article on setting your hourly rate covers what carers charge and how commission works, and our page on carers and pets covers looking after an animal on a visit.

When something breaks: whose problem is it

Extras are not only about driving and dogs. Something can get damaged in a client’s home while a carer is working, and then the question is who pays. In one call, a family member asked our team how to claim a broken fan against a carer’s insurance after it stopped working in a hot spell. Our team explained the order things happen in: the carer must be given the chance to respond first, whether she will pay to repair or replace the item, or dispute causing it, before anything moves to a claim. Under our procedure, that response window is fourteen days. Staff advised keeping the item, not throwing it away, with photos or video as evidence, in case the carer offered to have it repaired herself.

In another call, a client’s family said a carer had broken the motor on an adjustable bed by repeatedly knocking it while adjusting it during personal care, over three days of shifts. When the family raised it, by voice message and text, the carer felt accused of something she did not accept doing, and cancelled all her upcoming shifts with the family, forcing a scramble to rebook cover for the week. Our team asked the family to send video of the fault to pass on as proof it needed fixing. We do not know whether the carer and the family patched things up.

Both calls turn on the same point. A broken item is a dispute for a carer and a client to resolve directly first, with PrimeCarers helping by passing on evidence and giving both sides time to respond, not a claim made automatically. It tends to go better when treated as an accident to sort out rather than an accusation to answer. Only once that conversation fails does an insurance claim come into it. What a policy will and will not pay is then a question for the policy wording or the insurer, not something PrimeCarers can answer for a carer.

Our article on what to do when a household turns on you looks at disputes like the second one in more depth, and our guide to carer insurance covers claims more generally.

Before you say yes

The clearest version of this whole problem came from someone who had not even started on PrimeCarers yet. A qualified nurse nearing retirement called to ask how the platform worked, thinking about a few hours of self-employed care work, working for herself rather than an agency, alongside her nursing. She asked, several times, about liability insurance, cover that protects a carer and a client if something goes wrong during a visit, and how PrimeCarers made sure that was in place first. Our team could explain the checks on identity, right to work and DBS, the criminal record check used in care work, but had to admit they needed to check the insurance answer and come back to her. She left the call without one.

There must be some kind of insurance requirement, mustn’t there? You can’t just arrive at somebody’s house without that being covered.

She was right to keep asking, and right not to accept a vague answer. Whether an arrangement is covered depends on how the work is booked and whose car is involved, the details this article has gone through call by call. Any carer weighing up something new is better off asking before saying yes than working it out afterwards.

Our piece on the first two weeks on the platform covers other questions carers commonly get stuck on when starting out.

What to do next

• Before agreeing to drive a client for payment or mileage, check with your insurer whether your policy includes hire and reward cover, not just business use.
• Keep extra tasks, from dog walking to extra hours, booked and paid through PrimeCarers rather than arranged privately, so they are covered by PrimeCarers’ insurance rather than resting on your own.
• If you take on work outside the platform, know you are relying on your own public liability cover for anything that goes wrong.
• If something breaks while you are working, tell the client or their family straight away and let PrimeCarers help set out what happens next, rather than letting it become an accusation.
• If you are unsure what your policy covers, ask your insurer directly, before you agree to something new rather than after.

Related reading

• Paid in cash, or going direct: what carers lose, and what to say
• Setting your hourly rate: what carers charge and why
• Blamed: what to do when a household turns on you
• The first two weeks on the platform: where new carers get stuck