Home Care
What is Home Care?
How do I get
it?
What does
it cost?
Find out more
What is Home Care?
Home Care (sometimes known as "home help" or "home support") is care provided in your own home to enable you to maintain independence. It involves regular visits from a home care worker and may include:
- personal care
- shopping
- meals on wheels/frozen meals delivery
- collecting pensions and prescriptions, paying bills
- laundry - washing and ironing in home or laundrette
- general cleaning, heavy housework, some gardening
- equipment and adaptations - community alarms, joint equipment services and home improvements
Home care providers must have a Service User Guide detailing how staff will be picked, how care is planned, delivered, charged for and reviewed and how to change your care package.
How do I get it?
To access home care from your Local Authority, ask your Social Work Department for an assessment of your care needs. You can also ask your GP, district nurse or health visitor to arrange one for you.
Your needs will be discussed with you during a home visit and the Social Work Department will let you know afterwards in writing what assistance it is able to offer you to meet your assessed needs. For more information about the assessment, see our page on assessment of your care needs.
If you are assessed as needing home care, the Social Work Department may provide the home care itself, or it may arrange for a home care agency to provide it. You have a right to request self-directed support to enable you to pay for your own home care support from an agency or to employ your own home care worker.
Even if you decide to arrange and pay for your own home care, it is still a good idea to get an assessment of your care needs, to ensure that all your care needs are fully assessed and to ensure that you get any advice and financial assistance you may be entitled to.
To privately arrange your own home care, you can contact a home care provider or home care agency. Details of home care services can be found in our Care Services Directory. If you have not been assessed as needing home care as part of an assessment of your care needs, you will have to pay the full cost of any services you arrange.
Housing Authorities may also provide home care. A full list of Social Housing Landlords in Scotland is available from The Scottish Housing Regulator .
The Care Inspectorate offer a directory which includes home care providers (called "support services") registered with them. All services registered with the Care Inspectorate are regularly inspected and the inspection reports can be viewed on their website.
Scottish Care offer a directory of independent home care service providers.
What does it cost?
The cost of any services provided by your Local Authority will be set out in their charging policy. You can ask your Social Work Department for a copy of this. The amount you have to pay will depend on the outcome of a financial assessment. For more information about this, see our page on financial assessment.
If you are being discharged from hospital, and are aged 65 or over, you may be entitled to free home care from the Social Work Department for up to 28 days.
There is no charge for personal care provided by the Social Work Department if you are living in Scotland and are 65 or over and have been assessed as needing these services. Nursing care provided by the NHS is free. For more information, please see our page on Personal and Nursing Care.
Private home care service providers will have their own charging policies and rates may vary.
No matter who your provider is, you must be told what their
service will include and how much it will cost before the service
begins.
For more information on paying for care services, see How do I pay for care?
Find out more
Age Scotland produce the
following factsheet which applies to people in Scotland:
Factsheet 6: Finding Help at Home
You can also find details of Home Care services in our Care Services Directory.
last updated 29/02/2012
Other information which you might find helpful:
