Before you travel: what to settle with a client before day one

This is for carers who have just said yes to a new placement, live-in or hourly, and are waiting for day one to arrive. Live-in care means moving into a client’s home and staying there for a stretch of days or weeks, rather than visiting for set hours: our guide to how live-in care works covers the basics. The calls below show what happens in the days between accepting a job and starting it, when a placement is actually shaped.

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What the days before you start actually decide

A placement can be agreed in a single call and still come apart before it begins, because the details that make a job workable get sorted out afterwards, often in a rush, sometimes not at all: exactly when you arrive, how long a handover lasts, who else lives in the house, and what the client’s routine actually is. A handover is the period when the incoming carer and the carer, or family member, currently doing the care walk through the client’s needs together, before responsibility passes over. Our article on what to check before accepting a live-in placement covers what to ask before you say yes at all; this one picks up from there.

How long handover takes, and who else is in the house

An experienced live-in carer called our team the week she was due to start a new placement, caring for an elderly client whose family had booked her before, in a previous role. The plan, as the family described it, was for her to travel down the evening before and start caring for the client, alone, the next morning, with no proper handover at all.

She rang to check this was right before agreeing to it, and it wasn’t. Our team confirmed that a handover normally happens around midday: the incoming carer arrives, spends the afternoon being shown the client’s routine and needs directly, and takes over from there. Our page on what live-in carers are entitled to covers how handover time and rest breaks usually work. As she put it herself:

No, you get there at twelve o’clock, do the handover. And then you are in charge from there.

While she had our team on the phone, she also mentioned that someone else lives in the client’s home rent free, with nowhere else to go, and had reduced a previous carer to tears by interfering with her care of the client. Our team said that as long as this person did not interfere it was not a problem in itself, but that repeated interference could be raised with the family as a safeguarding concern, a formal flag about someone’s welfare or safety. Our article on safeguarding as a self-employed carer covers how and when to raise a concern like this.

The handover was fixed at midday, as standard, and the household concern was noted for follow-up if it recurred. This story is here because two things were worth checking before she agreed to the job: how much time she would actually get to learn the client’s needs before being solely responsible for them, and who else would be in the house from day to day.

A start date needs to be in writing

A different live-in carer had a new placement lined up to begin the moment her current one ended. She and the client’s family contact had spoken by phone several times about a start date, both confident they had agreed on one, though neither had it written down.

When our team rang the family contact to confirm the details, she was adamant the agreed date was a month later than the carer expected, and said the later date gave her plenty of time to give notice at her end. The carer was equally certain of the earlier date. It looks to have been a genuine mix-up between two different months.

By this point the carer had already given notice on her current placement, with only days left before she had to leave it and nothing lined up to follow. She told our team plainly what that meant:

This is a real mess, because I need a job starting Saturday. I leave here on Saturday.

Our team could not resolve the mix-up in time, so instead opened invitations to more than a dozen other live-in jobs straight away, to find her work for the following week. Whether she found a placement before her notice ran out is not something the call tells us. This story is here because a start date agreed only in conversation is only as solid as two people’s memory of it. Once agreed, it is worth confirming again in writing, a message or an email either side can point back to, before you give notice elsewhere because of it. Our article on the gap between live-in placements looks at what carers can do when a start date slips or falls through.

A full routine briefing, before the day itself

A carer who had applied to a part-time hourly job post, the online listing a family creates when they need a carer, was called by our team before being connected to the client directly. He lived alone and wanted help on specific evenings: cooking, since he could not stand at the stove for long and was tired of ready meals, and his bed made a particular way, after previous agency carers had simply pulled the covers up.

He slept through the morning and was awake into the small hours, and he disliked any change to his routine, which made him anxious. He kept in touch with his main, regular carer through handwritten notes left for each other, since their shifts did not overlap. Our team explained all of this before the two of them had ever spoken, because a change of carer was already a big adjustment for him.

She said she was still happy with everything she had heard, and our team shared phone numbers so she and the client could talk directly and arrange the details themselves. This story is here because it shows what a proper pre-start briefing looks like: not just the hours and the address, but the client’s routine, his temperament, and how his care is organised day to day, laid out in full before day one, rather than discovered on it.

When there isn’t time to learn the routine properly

Not every routine gets handed over so thoroughly. A carer new to a client with round-the-clock needs had been booked for a single shift before she was due to move in permanently the following month, specifically to see the client’s bedtime routine and know what to do once she started for real. Her shift was booked to finish before bedtime came round.

On the day, the client wanted the shift extended so the carer could see the routine through to the end, rather than leave beforehand. The carer had tried all day to reach her usual point of contact without success, and when she rang our support line directly, the client herself came on the line, insisting the office call back urgently so the extra time could be agreed.

The person who took the call could not authorise an extension herself, and could only take down the details and pass on an urgent message. Whether the shift was extended, or how the carer eventually learned the full bedtime routine, is not something the call tells us. This story is here because a full routine is not always something you can pick up in whatever time is left at the end of an ordinary shift. Anything at the edge of when a visit is booked to end, bedtime especially, usually needs its own arranged session, agreed in advance, rather than squeezed in and hoped for. Our guide to the daily routine for a live-in carer sets out what a routine usually covers, so you know what to ask to see.

Cover for training is worth asking for early

A live-in carer just past her first year with the same client needed a full day, roughly nine in the morning until six at night, to travel to a training provider and renew some of her mandatory certificates: the courses carers are required to keep current, including manual handling, the safe way to move someone who needs physical help.

She raised it with James, our founder, on a call, and asked whether cover could be arranged for that day. He worked out a fair day rate for a covering carer, based on what she was normally paid, and agreed to start looking for someone who could stand in once she had a date booked. She was clear about why it mattered:

I’ve got to stay legal. I can’t stay illegal.

Our team agreed to help find cover as soon as she confirmed a date. This story is here because keeping certificates current is part of the job, and it does not have to be a crisis: a single day’s cover, asked for in good time, is something our team can usually help arrange, provided you raise it before a certificate lapses. Our page on keeping your certifications up to date covers what needs renewing and how often.

What to do next

Once you have started, a different set of things tends to catch new carers out, covered in our article on the first two weeks on the platform. Before day one, though, this is worth settling:

• Ask exactly when handover happens and how long you will have before you are solely responsible for the client, and get it agreed rather than assumed.
• Ask who else lives in the house day to day, besides the client, before you start.
• Once a start date is agreed by phone, get it confirmed again in writing, especially if you are giving notice elsewhere because of it.
• Ask to be shown the client’s full routine before day one, including anything that happens at the edges of a normal shift, rather than relying on picking it up as you go.
• If your certificates are due to expire, ask about cover for training in good time, rather than waiting until a certificate has already lapsed.

Related reading

• Food, breaks and the room: what to check before accepting a live-in placement
• Safeguarding runs both ways: staying safe as a self-employed carer
• The gap between placements: what live-in carers face when a job ends
• The first two weeks on the platform: where new carers get stuck