The short answer
- The request is about the task, not about the carerWashing, dressing and going to the toilet are the part of the day your relative has done behind a closed door all their adult life. Who is in the room for it belongs to them.
- Nobody has to give a reasonA preference about who gives intimate care needs no story attached to it, and saying it before the first visit is easier than raising it afterwards.
- The search narrows to female or male before you read a profileSet the preference and carers of the other sex are left out of the results rather than moved down them. Confirm it in the first conversation as well.
- A male carer takes longer to findSkills for Care reported that 22% of the adult social care workforce identified as male in 2024/25. Searching a wider area does more than waiting does.
PrimeCarers is an introductory service, not a care agency, and holds no CQC registration. Carers are self-employed and set their own rates, £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, and asking for a woman or a man does not change what you pay.
Why this part is different
Why washing, dressing and the bathroom are not the same as housework
A carer's week is made of very different kinds of task, and they do not all ask the same thing of the person being helped. Set out in order, from the jobs anybody could do to the ones nobody sees, it shows why a family can be relaxed about one rung and firm about another.
1Jobs around the house
Nothing is touched but the housework
A carer doing these is in your mother's home rather than in her personal space. She keeps her clothes on, and she can be in another room while it happens.
- Shopping, and putting it away
- Laundry, ironing and changing the bed
- Washing up, the kitchen and the bathroom
- Watering the plants and feeding the cat
- Post, forms and ringing the surgery
Asking for a woman or a man here
A preference about whether a man or a woman does this is a preference, and a fair one. If it is making the search hard, it is the part of the list to let go of first.
2Company and going out
Time spent together, in the room
These visits are about who your mother enjoys the company of, which is worth reading the profiles for rather than filtering on.
- A cup of tea and an afternoon of talking
- A walk, the shops, or the garden centre
- Sitting with her while you go out
- A hobby she has stopped doing alone
- Going with her to an appointment
Asking for a woman or a man here
Somebody who would rather talk to a woman, or to a man, can say so. It is a reasonable thing to want and it costs nothing to ask for.
3Hands-on help with nothing uncovered
Close contact, clothes on
Here a carer is holding on to your mother rather than standing beside her. It is close and physical, and it still stops short of anything being uncovered.
- An arm to get out of the chair or up the stairs
- Shoes, coats, buttons and a hand into the car
- Hair brushed, teeth or dentures, a shave
- Meals cooked and eaten together
- Tablets prompted or handed over
Asking for a woman or a man here
Ask your mother about this rung on its own, because her answer to it may not be the same as her answer to the one below.
4Intimate personal care
Undressed, and usually in the bathroom
This is the part of the day your mother would have done behind a closed door all her adult life. Somebody else is now in the room for it, and which person that is belongs to her.
- Washing at the sink, in the shower or in bed
- Underwear, and dressing from the skin out
- Going to the toilet, and being wiped afterwards
- Changing a continence pad and cleaning the skin
- Cream on the bottom, the groin and between the toes
- A catheter bag, a stoma bag, or a bed changed at 3am
Asking for a woman or a man here
On this rung a request for a woman, or for a man, is part of the care rather than a favour being asked. Nobody has to give a reason for it, and it is the request the rules recognise.
The fourth rung is where the request stops being a preference. A woman who has been undressed by nobody but her husband since 1964 is not being awkward when she asks for a woman to help her into the shower, and a man who has managed his own catheter for a decade is not being difficult when he asks for another man. The personal care guide lists the full range of tasks a visit can cover.
The rules that govern care agencies say the same thing. The Care Quality Commission's guidance on Regulation 10, dignity and respect tells providers that when they give intimate or personal care they must make every reasonable effort to respect people's preferences about who delivers it, such as requesting staff of a specified gender or sex. The NICE guideline on people's experience in adult social care services asks at recommendation 1.4.11 that personal care needs are met in a dignified manner in line with the person's wishes. Neither binds a self-employed carer you engage directly, and PrimeCarers holds no CQC registration, so here the request is met by you choosing the carer rather than by a provider agreeing to it. On the law for sex, language and faith more generally, asking for a particular carer sets out the whole picture.
How to ask
How to ask, and how to ask for a parent who will not
The awkwardness comes from raising it at all rather than from the answer. These four steps put the request in front of the right person at the right time, and the first is a conversation at your mother's kitchen table rather than anything to do with a search.
- 1
Ask your relative first, and ask about the bathroom by name
Before you look at anybodyA general question gets a general answer, and "I do not mind" can mean "I have not pictured being undressed in front of a stranger". Ask about the shower and the toilet. Ask about the hands-on help on the third rung separately, because the answer can be different. - 2
Write it down as a requirement rather than a note
Ten minutesTwo lists: what has to be true, and what you would like. A female carer for the morning wash on the first, a carer who drives or who likes dogs on the second. A family holding four requirements at once is looking for somebody who may not live nearby. - 3
Set it on the search before you read any profiles
FreeThe carer search asks whether you would prefer a female carer, a male carer, or have no preference. Setting it first means your mother is not being shown photographs of men when she has already said she would rather not. - 4
Say it again on the first call, and put it in the care plan
This weekSay which visits the preference covers and which it does not, so nobody has to guess on a bad morning, and agree there and then what should happen if the carer is ever unwell.
Once you have agreed it, writing a care plan with your carer is where it belongs in writing. A line saying that personal care is done by a female carer, and that the shopping and the lunch call can be done by anybody, tells a carer exactly what to do the week they cannot come.
How the search works
What the search filter does, and what to confirm before the first visit
On PrimeCarers this is a box you tick rather than a request you make to an office. It is worth knowing exactly what the box does, because it settles one thing and leaves several others to the conversation.
The filter is applied strictly
Set before you see anybody
It narrows the map as well as the list
What to expect from the results
It does not settle experience or availability
Still yours to check
Confirm it in the first conversation rather than assuming
One question on the call
When you are ready, search for a carer and compare rates, experience and reviews with the preference set from the start. Before a carer appears there, PrimeCarers checks their identity and their right to work in the UK, sees an enhanced DBS certificate kept current on the Update Service, and interviews them online; what each of those checks covers sets out the limits. Carers are insured while they work. Qualifications, training and references are not part of the checks and are for you to go through with the carer.
What the search cannot tell you is how somebody behaves in a bathroom. Ask each carer how they would handle the wash: whether they talk through what they are about to do before they do it, whether they keep a towel over whatever is not being washed, and what they do on a morning when your mother says no. Listen for whether they answer about her or about the task.
When they cannot say
When your relative cannot tell you what they want
Dementia, a stroke or a serious illness can take away the ability to weigh up a question like this one. The decision then belongs to the people acting in your relative's best interests, and the law is specific about what has to go into it.
What to gather before anybody decides
0 of 9 ticked
What they said before
What they show you now
Who else has to be asked
This is not a matter of opinion. Under section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 anybody making a best interests decision must consider the person's past and present wishes and feelings, any relevant written statement they made while they had capacity, the beliefs and values that would have influenced them, and the views of people close to them. A settled lifelong preference about who washes you is the sort of thing that provision was written for. How mental capacity is assessed explains who decides and how, and advance decisions and advance statements covers writing wishes down while somebody still can.
Where a council is arranging or funding the care, the preference belongs in the assessment rather than raised afterwards. Under section 1 of the Care Act 2014 well-being includes personal dignity and control over the way care is provided, and a council must have regard to the individual's views, wishes, feelings and beliefs; how to ask for an assessment covers that. If personal care is where the resistance shows, when someone with dementia refuses care is the more useful page.
Finding a male carer
A male carer is harder to find, and what to do about it
Care work in England is done mostly by women, so a search for a male carer returns fewer people than a search for a female one. That is worth knowing before you start rather than after a fortnight of empty results.
- All roles, 2024/2522%
- Care worker roles21%
- All roles, 2012/13 to 2021/2218%
- Senior manager roles33%
Skills for Care, The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England 2025, executive summary. The male share held at 18 per cent from 2012/13 to 2021/22 and has risen in each of the three years since. Checked 17 September 2026.
For a daughter looking for a woman to wash her mother, the filter costs little. For a son looking for a man to shower his father it is a real constraint, and what helps is widening the area rather than waiting longer. Going from a fifteen minute travel time to thirty changes the result more than another fortnight of waiting will, and somebody who lives further away can still be the person who comes every morning. Travel time and mileage are chargeable only where you and the carer agree them in advance in writing.
What the request does not do is change the price. Carers on PrimeCarers set their own rates and the range is £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, against £28 to £35 an hour from an agency, and there is no premium for a female or a male carer. An hour every morning, seven days a week, comes to £126 to £175 a week. What an hour of care costs breaks the rates down and sets them against the alternatives.
If the search is thin, split the week rather than wait for one person who can do all of it. The morning wash is the visit where the request matters. A lunch call, the shopping and an afternoon of company can be done by anybody suitable, and booking those with a second carer gets your father washed this week. Notice between a client and a carer is 48 hours for hourly care, so a first booking is not a long commitment.
Two carers, and cover
Two carers for a transfer, and the day your carer cannot come
Two situations catch families out, and both are easier to settle in the first week than at seven o'clock on a wet Tuesday morning: care that needs two pairs of hands, and the morning your carer rings in ill.
What to set up while nothing is wrong
- Where a transfer needs two carers, search for both of them with the preference set, so the pair who come are both women or both men
- Find a second carer early and book them for the occasional visit, so somebody your mother has met can cover a week off
- Write the preference into the care plan, with a line saying what should happen if the usual carer is unwell
- Agree what your relative would rather do for one morning: a wash at the sink with somebody they do not mind, or wait until the afternoon
What not to agree to on the morning
- A substitute of the other sex turning up for the morning wash, when what you agreed was a female carer
- Somebody arriving whose identity, right to work and DBS nobody can tell you anything about
- A second carer stepping into a hoist transfer without having read the moving and handling plan
- An open-ended substitution, when what you agreed to cover was a single week
Care that needs two carers for the same visit, usually because a hoist is being used, doubles the request rather than complicating it. The number of handlers is set by the moving and handling assessment and does not change because of who is free that day. Transfers, hoists and when a visit needs two carers covers when a second person is needed and what the second rate does to the week.
On cover, the contract does much of the work for you. A visit your carer cannot work is not a visit you pay for. A carer may send a suitably qualified substitute in their place, arranged and paid by them, and you can turn a substitute down for a sound reason. Personal care given by somebody of the other sex, when the sex of the carer is what you agreed, is a sound reason, and saying so is not a complaint about that person. What happens when your carer is ill or on holiday sets out the five places cover comes from.
Questions
Questions families ask about asking for a female or male carer
Yes, and on PrimeCarers it is a preference you set on the search before you read any profiles, so only female carers come back in the results. Where an agency gives the care instead, the Care Quality Commission's guidance on Regulation 10 tells providers that when they give intimate or personal care they must make every reasonable effort to respect people's preferences about who delivers it, such as requesting staff of a specified gender or sex.
No. Where the help is with washing, dressing, the toilet or continence care, the request is part of the care and needs no explanation. It is worth being specific about which visits it covers rather than why: "the morning wash is done by a woman, the lunch call can be anybody" is something a carer can work from.
Yes where intimate personal care is involved. The Equality Act 2010 allows a requirement for a protected characteristic where it is an occupational requirement and applying it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and the sex of the person giving intimate care is the recognised example of that. Asking for a particular carer sets out the law in full, including why a carer's faith is treated differently.
The decision is made in his best interests, and section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 says what must go into it: his past and present wishes and feelings, any relevant written statement he made while he had capacity, the beliefs and values that would have influenced him, and the views of people close to him. A lifelong preference about who sees him undressed counts, and so does how he reacts now. Anyone holding a health and welfare lasting power of attorney has to be consulted.
No. Carers on PrimeCarers set their own rates, £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, and there is no premium for a female or a male carer. What it can cost is time: Skills for Care reported that 22% of the adult social care workforce identified as male in 2024/25, and 21% of people in care worker roles, so a search for a man returns fewer people and widening the travel time is usually the answer.
You can say no. A carer may send a suitably qualified substitute in their place, and you can decline one for a sound reason, including that the care you agreed is personal care given by a woman. A visit your carer cannot work is not a visit you pay for. The better answer is to have a second female carer who has already been to the house and read the care plan, booked for the occasional visit before anybody needs her.