Cameras, cash and trust: keeping a parent safe with a private carer

Almost every family we speak to now has a camera somewhere in a parent’s house. Very few bought it to catch a carer doing something wrong. In practice the commonest thing a camera does is answer a duller question: did the visit happen?

Private Carers – The Definitive Guide (Updated for 2024)

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What families really use cameras for

One daughter told our team she checked the footage at lunchtime and realised her mother, whose dementia had worsened over the winter, had gone roughly eighteen hours without food, water or her medication prompt. A promised visit had not happened.

“She’d finished her meal the night before, but by one o’clock nobody had been around, and she hadn’t had a drink.”

Another family’s doorbell camera recorded a carer arriving more than two hours late and pushing past an older man at his own front door. His daughter had already raised a safeguarding concern. What frightened her was not the rudeness but the arithmetic: “What if my dad had hit him? What happens if he’d fallen?”

A third daughter sat with the camera app open all day, dreading her mother’s first visit from a new carer. It went well.

“I was so relieved that my mum didn’t even inspect it. She ate the food. She liked what was presented on the plate.”

Three uses, and only one is suspicion. Cameras mostly do attendance, continuity and reassurance, and they work better alongside duller kit: a pressure mat by the bed, a door sensor, a tracker in a coat pocket. Our guide to technology that helps an elderly person live alone has more.

Cameras, capacity and the conversation to have first

The legal position is less dramatic than people expect. It turns on two questions: whose home is it, and does the person living there have capacity to decide?

If your parent has capacity, the camera is their decision, not yours, so ask them. Most say yes once the reason is put plainly. If they do not have capacity, it falls to whoever carries that responsibility, usually an attorney under a lasting power of attorney or a court appointed deputy, and it is worth writing down your reasoning. If you are unsure which applies, ask a solicitor. Our guide to filming carers in your home in the UK goes further.

Three practical rules keep families out of trouble.

• Tell the carer before they start, in writing. Put it in the job description and repeat it at the trial visit. Covert monitoring rarely shows you anything an open camera would not, and it poisons the relationship if it surfaces later.
• Keep cameras out of private spaces. No bathrooms, and nothing pointing at a bed where personal care happens. Never in the room a live in carer sleeps in.
• Think before you share footage. Recording at home for your own household is one thing. Posting a clip publicly, or round a family group chat, is another.

Carers almost never object to a camera they were told about. They object, reasonably, to discovering one.

“By the way, I prefer cash”

A man who had just discharged himself from a bruising hospital stay rang our team to report something rather than to ask for anything. A carer he was considering had told him she preferred cash to a platform booking, to avoid the fees.

“By the way, I prefer cash.”

He was not worried about the money. He thought it dishonest, and reported it so it would not be tried on somebody less able to spot it.

Families usually hear that as a small favour. Months later another family told us money had gone missing from the house. Their carer had been paid partly in cash, outside the platform, and when it ended there was nothing to go back to: no record of hours, no invoices, no cover from the next morning.

Cash off the books is a client side red flag, not just a platform’s grumble.

• There is no record of what was worked, so any argument about hours or money has no evidence on either side.
• Tax and status get murky for both of you. Self employed carers must declare their income, and a family directing unrecorded work can drift into being an employer.
• It removes the trail that protects an honest carer as much as it protects you.
• Insurance. Work booked through PrimeCarers is covered by PrimeCarers’ insurance. Work arranged outside the platform is not, so a carer needs their own public liability cover for that. Driving is separate again: business use on their car policy, and hire and reward cover only if they charge for mileage.

PrimeCarers checks carers’ identity, right to work and DBS documents, and carers complete our onboarding before they can be booked.

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.

Carers meet the same pressure from the other side, which we cover in the scams that target carers. For handling shopping money and receipts cleanly, see handling money for clients as a private carer.

The best screening test is whether they ask about you

The most transferable screening advice we have heard came from a woman who has used private carers for years, and who was manipulated out of £15,000 by somebody who won her trust first.

“I’ve had £15,000 taken from me, and I’m pretty savvy. They’ve done it because I liked them, and they were able to manipulate me.”

Her method now is not a background check, though she does those too. She judges a carer by whether they ask enough questions about her.

It is a better test than it sounds. Curiosity is hard to fake for an hour, and somebody whose interest is in the household rather than the person tends not to bother. A good carer asks:

• What does a normal morning look like, and what makes a bad one?
• What is she like when she is tired, in pain, or has not slept?
• Who else comes to the house, and who is allowed in?
• What went wrong with previous carers, and what do you want done differently?
• What should I never do without checking with you first?

Watch the direction of travel too. Early questions about who else lives there, where valuables are kept, whether there is a safe, or how often the family visits are worth writing down.

Documents are the floor, not the ceiling. A certificate records what somebody has passed, not what they can do on a difficult morning, which is the argument in the certificate says yes, can they actually do it?. The trial is where you find out, so read what a good trial looks like first, and our page on interviewing private carers for more questions.

When there is no paperwork at all

Not every arrangement starts with a job advert. A daughter who jointly owns her father’s house told our team that his live in housekeeper of about a year, found informally online, had never been asked for a CV, references or a DBS check. After a mild stroke he had handed over his phone and his messages, and he would not let her raise any of it.

“He’s too embarrassed now, after all this time, to ask for a CV and references.”

Nothing in that account proves anybody did anything wrong, and it matters to say so. What it shows is a household with no way of checking, which is a risk either way.

The move that works is addition, not confrontation. Rather than demanding paperwork from one individual, which lands as an accusation, bring in a second carer for a couple of shifts a week and make document checks a household standard applying to everybody. The paperwork question then belongs to the system rather than to a person. Our guide to background checks for private carers sets out what to ask for.

Two more things while there is time. Sort a lasting power of attorney before it is needed, because it cannot be arranged once capacity has gone. And keep money separate from caring: a third party bank mandate or a card with a spending limit, receipts kept, and nobody providing care holding sole access to the accounts.

If something has already gone wrong

A daughter told us she had twice warned a provider that her mother’s regular carer had become short tempered. By the time she rang us there was bruising, and what she described as long stretches of isolation.

“There was bruising, periods of isolation, and sort of every opposite of what caring should be.”

She paused the job, stepped back in herself for a while, and rebuilt from there. If you find yourself in that position:

1. Write it down with dates and times while it is fresh. A log is the most useful thing you can produce later.
2. If there is an injury, have a GP or nurse see it and record what they find.
3. Raise it in writing with whoever arranged the care, and say what you want done.
4. Contact the adult safeguarding team at the local council. If somebody is in immediate danger, that is a 999 call.
5. Stop the visits while you sort it out, even if you have to cover yourself for a fortnight.

Councils carry more of this than families realise, and safeguarding teams are stretched. You will get further by being easy to help: a dated log, a short factual summary, one named family contact, a polite chase. Ask your social worker how they would prefer a request worded, and agree a date to speak again.

Plenty of families move from an agency rota to named, consistent, self employed carers paid through council direct payments, so the same face turns up. If that is you, direct payments: the money is yours, and six things nobody tells you covers what catches people out.

One last line from that daughter, which we repeat often: “Go now and just get yourself somebody to chat to every week for an hour.”

What to do next

1. Settle the camera question in the open. Ask your parent if they can decide, record your reasoning if they cannot, tell the carer beforehand, and keep cameras out of bathrooms and bedrooms.
2. Put every payment on the record. Agreed rate, agreed hours, an invoice or platform booking per visit. If a carer suggests cash to dodge fees, treat it as information about how they work.
3. Screen on questions, not only certificates. At the trial visit, count how many the carer asks about your parent, and notice what they ask about instead if they do not.
4. Handle money and legal paperwork separately from the care. Third party bank mandate, receipts for shopping, and a lasting power of attorney before anybody needs it.
5. If you need cover, or a second carer alongside an arrangement you are unsure about, post a job and describe the household honestly, camera included.

Related reading

• Is it illegal to film carers in your home in the UK?
• The certificate says yes. Can they actually do it?
• Meeting a carer: what a good trial looks like, and what a bad one costs
• How to check a private carer: your step by step guide
• Trouble with carers? Steps to take when problems arise