Going away when someone depends on you

Whether it is the family going away or the carer who normally holds everything together, a holiday changes who is looking after whom. This is for families who already have care arranged and need to organise cover for a break, whether it is their own holiday or a regular carer’s time off. It uses real calls made to our team to show what goes wrong when cover is left too late, and what a plan that actually works looks like.

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The situation people are in

Most families with care in place have built a routine around one or two people: a self-employed carer, who works for themselves rather than through an agency and sets hours directly with the family, or a live-in carer, who lives in the home for a stretch of days or weeks at a time. That routine depends on the carer being there. When someone in it needs to go away, whether that is the family taking a holiday, the regular carer taking planned time off, or the person receiving care going away themselves, the routine breaks for a period and someone has to arrange who covers it.

Carers found through PrimeCarers have had their identity, right to work and DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) documents checked, and have completed our onboarding process before they are matched with a family.

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.

Even a carer who has passed those checks still needs to be properly introduced to the person they will look after, and that introduction is often the part families forget to plan for when a holiday is arranged in a hurry. The rest of this article is built around four real calls that show what tends to go wrong, and what tends to go right.

When cover isn’t arranged in time

A daughter in her fifties had been sharing the care of her mother, who has dementia, between two carers. One of the two had already left the arrangement, and the second had a holiday booked that could not be moved. That left no cover in place for the week the second carer would be away.

Rather than find someone new in time, the daughter decided to fill the gap herself, telling our team she had ended up doing several days of full care on top of her own life. By the time she called, she said her back was “completely knackered” from the physical work, and that her mother’s dementia related behaviour had grown harder to manage over the same weeks.

The day before the call, she had moved her mother into a residential care home. She told our team plainly:

“I just can’t cope.”

She had reached that point after trying to bridge the gap herself rather than arranging replacement cover in advance. Her story shows what can happen when a carer’s own holiday is not covered ahead of time: the nearest family member absorbs it, and if the gap runs on, it can become the reason home care stops altogether.

What it shows, and what to do differently

A carer’s own planned time off is exactly as predictable as a family holiday, so it can be planned for in the same way. Confirming a named replacement for the specific dates, rather than hoping a carer already working reduced days will simply do more, gives a family early warning if a gap cannot be filled, and time to look elsewhere. This is exactly the situation covered in when a carer cancels: cover, notice, and the month-ahead rule.

Where a gap genuinely cannot be filled from within a family’s usual carers, it is still possible to find someone at short notice, as described in how an urgent live-in placement gets filled. But it is far easier, and far less stressful for everyone, to start that search while there is still a fortnight or a month to work with, rather than during the week itself. Some families choose to arrange a live-in carer temporarily just to cover a known gap like this.

A second story that adds a different angle

A woman in her fifties, whose husband has a heart condition, was arranging a week of live-in cover for her father so the two of them could take a rare holiday together.

She had found a live-in carer she liked for the week her father’s usual carer would be away. But the new carer was finishing other work in the days before the placement was due to start, and the earliest she could arrive was the same evening the family’s regular carer had to leave to catch his own flight. That left no overlap between the two carers, and no chance for the new carer to meet her father before starting the job.

She told our team she was anxious the new carer might not arrive on time, after an earlier meeting had already been disrupted by transport problems, and worried about being the go-between while trying to actually enjoy a rare break with her husband. Staff explained that it is normal for a live-in carer to start a placement without meeting the client in person first, because carers travel between jobs right across the country, and offered to arrange a handover, a call where one carer briefs the next on routines, medication and any needs, between the outgoing and incoming carer. They also suggested a video call so her father could see and hear the new carer before she arrived. Advice on the in-person version of this meeting is set out in how should I interview live-in carers.

She summed up what was worrying her:

“I don’t want anything going wrong with the arrangement.”

She decided to give herself a few more days rather than rush the decision. When she called again the following week, still anxious about timing, a member of staff agreed to call the carer directly to confirm exactly what time she would arrive for a meeting planned for the Friday.

Her story shows that finding cover well ahead of a holiday is only half the job. The handover, who meets whom, and when, needs managing too, and a phone or video handover is a normal, safe way to bridge the gap when two carers cannot physically overlap.

The practical part: two families who got it right

Not every call to our team before a holiday is a crisis. These two show what it looks like when cover is arranged with enough time behind it.

A daughter checked her mother’s online care schedule the day before her own holiday and could not see any carer booked in beyond the following week. She called our team, worried she would be away and unable to sort it if something had gone wrong. A member of staff logged into her mother’s account with her on the phone and showed her that a new carer was already provisionally booked from that date, with a second carer lined up as a backup in case the first could not confirm. While checking, staff also noticed the address on the care plan had mistakenly been set to the daughter’s own postcode rather than her mother’s, which would have sent the incoming carer to the wrong house. Both were sorted before she left. Her story shows that even when a plan is already in place, checking the schedule for the specific dates you will be away, not just the current week, can catch a mistake while there is still time to fix it.

Another family called about two months ahead of a planned holiday to ask about a week of overnight cover for a relative. In the past, carers she did not know had caused her to try to run away, and the family had found over time that she only settled with carers who were native Italian speakers, not simply people who could speak the language. Our team agreed to advertise the placement as a job post, a listing that carers can search and apply to, filtered specifically for that requirement, in the way described in when a carer’s first language is a clinical requirement. It is also possible to search directly for carers that speak a specific language. The call ends there, and we do not know from it whether a match was found in time. But the family’s approach, asking months rather than days ahead, gave the search the best possible chance for a requirement that narrows an already small pool of available carers.

What to do next

• As soon as you know a holiday date, whether it is yours or your regular carer’s, tell your agency or platform so the search for cover can start early.
• Check your online schedule for the actual dates you will be away, not just the current week, a few days before you go.
• If a new carer will start without meeting the person in advance, ask for a phone handover between the outgoing and incoming carer, and a video call with the person being cared for if that would help.
• If there is a specific requirement, a language, a particular condition, a personality that works well, say so as early as you can, since it narrows an already small pool further.
• If a gap cannot be filled from your usual carers, ask about short-term or temporary cover rather than absorbing it yourself for an extended stretch.

Related reading

• Carer supported holidays: the essential guide
• Can I hire a live-in carer temporarily?
• When a carer cancels: cover, notice, and the month-ahead rule
• Twenty-four hours: how an urgent live-in placement gets filled
• Speaking his language: when a carer’s first language is a clinical requirement