The short answer
- The morning call does the most workA carer gets your relative up, washed, dressed, fed and medicated within the hour. It is the first visit almost every family books.
- The lunch call is about eatingA hot meal cooked and eaten with company, plus the midday tablets. It is usually the second visit a family adds.
- Tea and tucking in can be one visitMost families book one evening call that does both: a meal, then nightclothes, tablets and the doors locked.
- Keep the weekly jobs separateShopping, bedding and appointments go in their own longer visit, so the daily hour stays about the person.
Every visit here is booked in half hours with a one-hour minimum, at £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included. Agencies charge £28 to £35 for the same visits.
The day of visits
One, two or three visits a day
Switch between the three patterns most families use. You will see what the carer does in each slot, how long each stretch on their own is, and what seven days of it costs.
Choose a pattern
Both ends of the day covered
A morning call to start the day and an evening call to finish it. That covers meals, medication and safety at the two points in the day where things most often go wrong.
Solid green is a carer in the house. The hatched stretches are time on their own between 7am and 10pm.
- The morning call8am to 9am
A carer gets your relative up, washed, dressed, fed and medicated. It is the visit most people need first, and the one that takes longest.
- 5 minArrive, kettle on, read yesterday’s notes
- 25 minOut of bed, to the bathroom, a wash or a shower
- 15 minDressed, hair, teeth, glasses and hearing aid in
- 12 minBreakfast, a drink and the morning tablets
- 3 minCurtains open, a drink left in reach, notes written up
- On their own9am to 6pm, 9 hours
That is nine hours through the middle of the day. Lunch is left ready in the fridge with a note on it, and this is the stretch families ask a neighbour to look in on.
- The tea and tucking-in call6pm to 7pm
One evening visit doing the work of two: a hot meal, then nightclothes, tablets, the doors locked and the bed ready.
- 4 minArrive, bins and post, lamps on
- 26 minTea cooked and eaten, the kitchen cleared
- 16 minA wash, nightclothes, teeth, continence pants changed
- 8 minEvening tablets and creams
- 6 minDoors locked, cooker off, bed turned down, a drink by the bed, notes written
- On their own7pm to 10pm, 3 hours
That leaves three hours between tea and bed, with the house already locked and the bed ready.
Seven days of this
14 visits a week
What that costs on PrimeCarers
£252 to £350 a week
At £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included. Most families pay about £280. An agency would charge £392 to £490 for the same visits.
Someone who needs personal care at both ends, or who was leaving the cooker on and the front door unlocked at night.
See hourly carers near youTimes are typical rather than fixed. You agree the hour with your carer, and most families shift it by half an hour in the first fortnight once they see how the mornings go.
Nearly every arrangement starts at one visit a day and moves along this line as needs change. Almost nobody starts at three. If you are not sure which row your parent is on yet, work backwards from the tasks instead of the clock: our needs-to-hours guide builds the week from what they can no longer do alone.
The morning call
The morning call, minute by minute
The morning call is the longest job of the day, and it has the shortest window to happen in. A carer plans it as roughly 40 minutes of personal care and 20 minutes of everything else.
- 8.00
In the door, kettle on, notes read
A carer reads what happened at the last visit before they do anything: whether the night was bad, whether the tablets were taken, whether the district nurse is due. Five minutes, and it is the difference between a carer who knows your mother and one who is guessing.
- 8.05
Out of bed and into the bathroom
This is the riskiest transfer of the day: sitting up, then on to the edge of the bed, then the frame or the stick and along the landing. Most days it is a wash at the sink, with a shower two or three times a week and hair washed once or twice. It takes about 25 minutes and it cannot be hurried.
- 8.30
Dressed, teeth, glasses, hearing aid
Clothes chosen with them rather than for them. Creams applied, a continence pad changed, teeth or dentures done, nails checked. Glasses on and the hearing aid in, because without them the rest of the day goes wrong.
- 8.45
Breakfast and the morning tablets
Something hot if they want it, a full drink, and the tablets given from a blister pack or a dosette box and signed for on the chart. What a carer can and cannot do with medication is set out in our guide to home carers and medication.
- 8.57
Curtains, a drink in reach, notes written
The last three minutes are where a rushed visit shows: the drink left on the wrong table, the pendant alarm still in the bedroom, the note not written up. A carer with an hour has time for all of it, and a carer on a 30-minute call often does not.
Nothing on that list is padding. Reading the notes, watching the tablets go down and the safety check at the end are the jobs that get cut first when a visit is too short, which is the argument in why 15 and 30 minute calls fail. What a carer can and cannot do with tablets, blister packs and creams is set out in our guide to medication at home.
Two things stretch a morning call past the hour and both are worth planning for. A shower rather than a strip wash adds 15 to 20 minutes, so many families book 90 minutes on shower days and an hour on the others. And a bad night adds time to everything: a wet bed means stripping and remaking it, a fresh nightdress, a wash rather than a wipe. If that is happening more than once a week, look at overnight care a few nights a week rather than making the mornings longer.
The lunch call
The lunch call, and why it is usually the second one booked
Families usually add a lunch call when the fridge shows that meals are being missed: food going off, the same tin eaten every day, or nothing eaten at all.
- 1.00
In, post opened, a look around the rooms
A carer walks through the house on the way to the kitchen, checking whether the bed has been got back into and whether the heating is on. A cup of tea from breakfast still sitting full and cold on the side usually means the morning was worse than it looked.
- 1.05
A hot meal, cooked and eaten together
Thirty minutes covers cooking something simple and sitting at the table while it is eaten. Eating with someone matters as much as the food: people who eat alone eat less, and weight loss is one of the earliest signs that care needs are rising.
- 1.35
Midday tablets and the kitchen cleared
Tablets given and signed for, the plates washed, the surfaces wiped, the bin out if it needs it, and anything past its date taken out of the fridge.
- 1.45
The loo, a walk to the gate, a hand of cards
The last quarter of an hour is the part people look forward to: a walk to the postbox, the crossword, the photographs or the football. That is company rather than a task, and it is the reason many people accept a carer at all.
- 1.57
Notes up to date, next visit confirmed
What was eaten, what was taken, anything that has changed. The evening carer and the family both read it.
A lunch call is also the visit that most often turns into something bigger. An hour cooking and eating is an hour of company, and once someone has that they usually want a bit more of it: a trip to the garden centre, a hairdresser, a coffee somewhere that is not the kitchen. That is companionship care, and it is booked exactly the same way, by the hour, with the same carer.
Tea and tucking in
The tea call and the tucking-in call
These are two named visits that most families buy as one. Whether you need one or both comes down to how far apart the meal and bedtime are.
The two evening visits, and the one that does both
| Usual time | What it covers | Who books it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The tea call | 4pm to 7pm | An evening meal cooked and eaten, teatime tablets, the washing up, the kitchen left ready for the morning. | Someone who can get themselves to bed but cannot cook safely any more. |
| The tucking-in call | 7pm to 9.30pm | A wash, nightclothes, teeth, continence pants, evening tablets, doors and windows locked, the bed turned down and a drink left by it. | Someone who eats early or has meals delivered, but cannot manage the stairs and the bathroom at night. |
| One evening call doing both | 5pm to 8pm | The meal first, then straight into nightclothes and tablets, the house locked and the bed ready. An hour, sometimes 90 minutes. | Most families. It is one visit to pay for, one arrival, and it ends the day properly. |
The tea call
- Usual time
- 4pm to 7pm
- What it covers
- An evening meal cooked and eaten, teatime tablets, the washing up, the kitchen left ready for the morning.
- Who books it
- Someone who can get themselves to bed but cannot cook safely any more.
The tucking-in call
- Usual time
- 7pm to 9.30pm
- What it covers
- A wash, nightclothes, teeth, continence pants, evening tablets, doors and windows locked, the bed turned down and a drink left by it.
- Who books it
- Someone who eats early or has meals delivered, but cannot manage the stairs and the bathroom at night.
One evening call doing both
- Usual time
- 5pm to 8pm
- What it covers
- The meal first, then straight into nightclothes and tablets, the house locked and the bed ready. An hour, sometimes 90 minutes.
- Who books it
- Most families. It is one visit to pay for, one arrival, and it ends the day properly.
A tucking-in call before 7pm puts someone in their nightclothes while it is still light, which many people hate and some find distressing. If bedtime has to be late and tea has to be early, that is the case for booking both.
The tucking-in call is the one families underestimate. It is not a tidy-up at the end of the day; it is the visit that decides whether the night goes well. A person who has been to the toilet, had their tablets, has a drink they can reach and a pendant alarm on their wrist is far less likely to be up at 3am looking for any of it, and getting up at 3am is when older people fall. If the nights are still going wrong after a good tucking-in call, the next step is usually a sleeping night carer, not an earlier bedtime.
The weekly long visit
The one longer visit that keeps the daily hour clean
Shopping, bedding, the bathroom and the GP do not belong in a morning call. Book them once or twice a week as their own visit and the daily hour stays about the person.
What goes in the weekly visit
0 of 5 ticked
Book 90 minutes to 2 hours, once or twice a week
Two hours a week, at £36 to £50, buys back the Saturday you currently spend on the shop and the sheets, and what a carer can do in an hour, two hours or half a day shows exactly what fits in that block. It is also the visit where a carer sees the whole house rather than one room, which is how the slow changes get spotted: the pile of unopened post, the freezer full of the same meal, the bath nobody has used in a month. There is a fuller list of what a carer can and cannot take on in our guide to shopping, cooking and cleaning.
The gaps between
What happens between the visits
Visits are easy to picture. The hours between them are the part families forget to plan, and they are where most of the risk sits.
- No care at all15 hrs
- One visit a day13 hrs
- Two visits a day9 hrs
- Three visits a day5 hrs
- Live-in careNone
Based on the visit times in the planner above: an 8am morning call, a 1pm lunch call and a 7pm tucking-in call. Nights are on top of every figure except live-in care.
Adding a fourth visit is rarely the answer to a long gap, because a fourth hour costs the same as the first three and still leaves four hours uncovered either side of it. What families do instead, in rough order of cost, is leave a hot flask and a plated lunch out at the morning call, ask a neighbour to look in, book a day centre place or a longer companionship visit twice a week, or move to live-in care. Past about 35 hours a week the sums change completely and a live-in carer costs about the same as the visits.
35 hours
Three visits a day, seven days, plus a weekly long visit comes to 23 hours. Add a fourth visit and a sitting service and you are near 35 hours, which is where live-in care starts to cost less and covers the gaps and the nights.
PrimeCarers rates, August 2026, our fee included.
Writing it down
How to turn these visits into a care plan
A care plan is not a legal document you need help with. It is one page saying who comes, when, and what they do. Carers work better from it and families argue less about it.
- 1
Name the visits and pin the times
20 minutesWrite "morning call, 8 to 9am, seven days" rather than "help in the morning". Give a window of half an hour either side and say which slot matters most. If Tuesday is the day the chiropodist comes, say so. - 2
List the tasks inside each visit, in order
The important bitUse the minute-by-minute lists on this page as a template and cut what does not apply. Say which days involve a shower, which tablets are given and from what, and what should be left out for later. - 3
Write down what "left safe" means
5 minutesDrink within reach, alarm on the wrist, walking frame by the chair, back door locked, heating on. It is the last three minutes of every visit and the part most worth being specific about. - 4
Agree it with the carer, then change it
Week oneGo through it on the first visit and again after a fortnight. A carer who has done six mornings knows things you do not, and the plan should absorb that. Keeping the same carer is what makes this work, which is why we let you choose one and stay with them.
The advantage of booking care this way rather than buying a package is that the plan is yours. Adding a lunch call, moving the evening visit half an hour later or dropping to weekdays only is a conversation with your carer, not a contract change. Continuity is the other half of it: the same face every visit means somebody notices the change in week two rather than month three, which is the argument set out in why the same carer every visit matters.
The words agencies and social workers use
- Domiciliary care
- The formal name for care delivered at home in visits. "Hourly care" and "visiting care" mean the same thing.
- Call
- One visit. A "double-up call" means two carers at once, usually for a hoist transfer.
- Tucking-in call
- The last visit of the day, getting someone ready for bed. Sometimes written as a "bed call" or a "night call", though a night call can also mean an overnight visit.
- Pop-in
- A short check-in visit, often 15 or 30 minutes. We do not book them, for the reasons in our guide to minimum visit length.
- Care plan
- The written record of what happens at each visit. The council writes one after an assessment; you can write your own without waiting.
Questions
Questions about the standard visits
The last visit of the day, usually between 7pm and 9.30pm. A carer helps with a wash, nightclothes, teeth and continence pants, gives the evening medication, checks the doors and windows, turns the bed down and leaves a drink and the phone within reach. It takes about an hour and it is the visit that decides how the night goes.
A carer reads the notes from the last visit, helps the person out of bed and into the bathroom, washes or showers them, helps them dress and do teeth, hair and creams, makes breakfast, gives the morning tablets and signs the chart, and leaves them settled with a drink in reach. About 40 minutes of that is hands-on personal care, which is why an hour is the shortest sensible morning visit.
A tea call is about the evening meal, usually between 4pm and 7pm. A tucking-in call is about getting ready for bed, usually between 7pm and 9.30pm. Most families book one evening visit that does both, at around 5pm to 8pm. Book them separately only when the meal has to be early and bedtime has to be late.
On PrimeCarers the shortest visit is one hour, and visits are then booked in half hours. Agencies often sell 15 and 30 minute calls, which is a rota decision rather than a care one. A morning call with a shower usually needs 90 minutes; a lunch call or a tucking-in call fits in an hour. Every hour is £18 to £25 with our fee included, whether it is the first visit of the day or the third.
Yes. Carers prompt, hand over and give medication from a blister pack or a dosette box and sign a medication chart each time. There are tasks that need a nurse rather than a carer, and there are rules about what a carer can do with controlled drugs and injections. What home carers can do with medication covers where the line sits.
One. An hour every morning, seven days a week, is the most common first booking, because the morning is the hardest part of the day for most people. Families usually add a second visit in the evening within a few months, and a lunch call after that if eating becomes the problem.
No. Plenty of families book a morning call every day and add a lunch call only on the days nobody else can get there, or book two visits on weekdays and three at the weekend. You agree the pattern with your carer directly, so it can be different on different days and can change whenever you need it to.
Look at the length of the gap before you add another visit. A fourth hour costs the same as the first three and still leaves several hours uncovered. Options in rough order of cost are a plated meal and a flask left at the morning call, a neighbour or family member looking in, a longer companionship visit twice a week, and then live-in care, which usually costs about the same as visits once you are past 35 hours a week.