The Benefits of Live In Care

By Kirsty Holland Our live in care supervisor, Kirsty Holland, walks us through the disadvantages and advantages of live in care.

Our live in care supervisor, Kirsty Holland, walks us through the disadvantages and advantages of live in care, and how it could potentially help reduce some of the pressure that the NHS and the county are facing.

There are so many advantages to live in care- you can stay at home with your home comforts, pets, bed, photographs and cherished memories after all most of us feel better in our own bed. Another benefit is friends, family and neighbours can find it easier to visit people when they are at home. It can be quite disheartening to visit residential homes or hospitals, visitors can find it very difficult because of logistics – getting there in visiting hours, parking costs, the atmosphere and noise, whereas if you’re visiting someone in their own home it’s just a bit friendlier. You can get back into your own routine with your visitors’.

The biggest benefit of having live in care is that you get one to one care. Your care assistant is available for you and only you, they don’t have other residents or patients that are making demands on their time – their full focus is on you. Our customers are able to keep their own routines and do not have to adjust to timings such as meal times, bed times, and entertainment times. Your live in carer will be happy to work around a schedule of your choosing and offer full flexibility within this.

Having someone in the house also means added security, if you need them in an emergency they are there- even if it’s just for reassurance. If a problem arises at night you can rouse them, they are there to help if needed. Sometimes being unwell or confused can make you feel more vulnerable and we often hear from our customers that they feel safer and less anxious having their carer sleeping in the property.

The negatives of live in care are very few- you build a relationship with a new person in your own home, who initially is a stranger we understand that this can be difficult. For a smooth transition we work really hard to match the care assistant and the customer, we look at requirements, wishes and personality traits because we are all different after all. We don’t always get it right the first time, but we always ensure a good match is achieved and that our wonderful care assistants are a great fit for our customers.  It can be difficult in the beginning when you are learning to live with somebody else in the property, but from our experience we find that our live in customers get used to having another person in the property pretty quickly.

From a care assistant’s point of view, you can really develop your relationships with customers, you get to know the ins and outs of their customer’s routine and what is normal for them. Live in care assistants talk about the benefits of spending time with customers who are convalescing after a hospital stay and being able to really promote their independence, and prompt the regaining or maintaining of skills. Care assistants talk of the rewards seen when their customer is able to do a task independently that they had previously struggled with, for example if a customer has had a stroke, their live in care assistant can work quite intensively with the customer guided by occupational therapy and physiotherapy teams to build up their strength and promote their independence. From a logistical perspective as well the care assistant knows where they’re going to be, they’re not going to and from different houses every day.

Financially you’re paying around about the same price as a residential care placement (care home) but with all the benefits of being in your own house. With a residential care placement you share the care costs with other people and therefore share the care team. With live in care your care assistant is there just for you. It is also worth bearing in mind that some people qualify for assistance towards the cost of live in care.  For some of our live in care customers, home care is not an option due to the rurality of their homes, resulting in an unwanted move into residential care or nursing home. We offer a really good alternative to placement care therefore expanding a customer’s options.

This time of year we hear a lot about winter pressures. Winter pressures impact on all areas of healthcare. Hospitals get very busy, patients who are medically well but need more convalescence or recovery are transferred to local cottage hospitals and step down beds, and these then in turn get very busy. What if there was an alternative to transferring to a step down bed, what if there was a way of going home to recover and convalesce in your own environment; this is when live in care really comes into its own. After all, live in care can also be put in place for a short period of time to enable this.