What is a Private Carer?

Private carers, also known as personal assistants, are self-employed individuals who offer cost-effective and flexible home care services, including companionship, personal care, and household tasks; These private carers set their own hours, rates and choose their clients.

What Does a Private Carer Do?

A Private Carer carries out three main tasks; companionship, personal care and household tasks. This includes washing, dressing, toileting, cooking, cleaning and taking your loved one out.

Companionship

One of the primary roles of a private carer is companionship and socialisation for older people. In this area, private carers excel as, unlike other forms of care, you get the same carer every day. This helps people build relationships with their carers without seeing a new person daily.

Personal Care

This is what most of us think about when we think of care. This supports the day-to-day activities of living, such as bathing, toileting, moving around the house and getting dressed. A private carer can perform many of these activities, but some require a trained nurse. These include dressing wounds and performing medication injections. Find out more about what carers are not allowed to do.

Household Tasks

Maintaining the house is another core role of a carer. From cooking and cleaning to handling letters, shopping and other administrative tasks.

What Are the Benefits of Private Carers?

A private carer has three main benefits; consistency of care, price and flexibility.

Consistency of Care

An unknown individual entering your house to help you with everyday tasks can be a major roadblock for many families looking to ease the burden of care for their loved ones. Getting used to a new person being around to help can be long and time-consuming.

A care agency does not help it with a constantly changing staff rota. This is where private carers shine. When you decide to work with a private carer, you work with them directly and only with them.

Price

Making your loved ones hard earnt savings go as far as possible is another area that makes private carers the clear winner. Without the overheads of a larger organisation and the governance paperwork, private carers can earn more than they would at an agency while charging their clients less. If you’d like to see up-to-date pricing information for carers on PrimeCarers, check out our pricing page.

Flexibility

Your private carer works for you and nobody else. A Private carer isn’t a rushed agency carer desperately trying to get through a checklist on a care plan; they go the extra mile to ensure you are happy and meet your needs.

What are the challenges of private carers?

While private carers offer a lot of benefits, the process of finding, interviewing, background checking and contracting with a private carer can be a difficult and time-consuming process for busy families that are looking for support to ease their workload.

To avoid the worries listed below, consider using an introductory service. They maintain databases of pre-vetted and background-checked carers ready for you to hire, along with standardised contract terms to make it easy and simple to work with new carers. Take a look here: primecarers.co.uk

Finding a Carer

There are many ways to find a private carer, from newspapers to websites and introductory services. The easiest way to get started is to enter your location at the top of this page and see what carer coverage PrimeCares has near your area. We’re an introductory service that makes it easy for you to find and work with private carers.

If you would like to find out about other options, check out our full article on finding a carer.

Checking Your Carer

There are four things to check with any potential private carer:

1. Do they know their stuff? You can use certificates or interview the carer on specific questions.
2. Do they have the right documents? We’re looking at ID documents, right-to-work and Enhanced DBS Certificates.
3. Do they have references? Seeking reviews from previous employers of a private carer is important
4. Do they have insurance? Even with all of this, it’s important to check that the carer has public liability and/or business care insurance.

If you’d like to learn more, read our full guide to interviewing carers.

Contracting a Private Carer

Once you’ve found the perfect carer, you’ll need to find a way to work with them on an ongoing basis where you both understand your rights and responsibilities to each other. This is where a solid care contract comes in.

An ideal contract will cover; agreed payment rates, notice periods, and scope of work.

Other Private Carer Questions

Do Private Carers Need to be Registered?

No. A Private carer that works directly with a client does not need to be registered with the CQC (Care Quality Commission) like most care agencies need to.

Our full article about CQC registration for carers better explains the reasons for this.

Conclusion

We hope you’ve found the introduction to private care useful.

As we mentioned above. This article is part of our main series on Home Care.