What Support and Help Would You Get from a Care Home in the UK?


Home care agencies in the UK offer a full and comprehensive range of services. At agencies like frasercarebournemouth.co.uk/care-agency-bournemouth, the professionals understand that the needs of each person will vary according to their state of health and state of mind at any time. Let’s take a look at an overview of all the services available, with details of who might have need of them. 

The Day to Day Household 
This includes tasks like cleaning and domestic chores, and meal preparation. This type of caring involves little hands-on work with the customer, instead simply working to make it easier for your elderly loved one to retain a degree of independence, living in their own home, but ensuring that they eat regularly and that their homes are properly cleaned and maintained. Many household chores can become too much for older bodies, and they can fall by the wayside as age robs muscle of strength and eyes of clarity of vision. Carers can also often provide first aid in the event of an emergency, such as a fall or injury occurring in the home. 

Minor Personal Assistance 
Assisting elderly people to get up in the morning, and to go to bed at night, and ensuring that they are eating well, especially if they are becoming unsteady on their feet and tire easily while eating, is very important in ensuring that your parent or grandparent remains well-nourished and well-rested despite any minor aches or ailments that might beset them. Something as relatively minor as arthritis in the dominant hand can make cooking and eating a meal into a torment instead of a pleasurable and fortifying experience. Sadly, old age is full of such aches and pains, and it is possible that an elderly person will simply stop trying should continuing to make the effort become too much for them. Carers will pop in two or three times a day, staying anything from fifteen minutes to a couple of hours at each visit, depending on what help is needed. 

Major Personal Assistance 
Very elderly and infirm people, as well as those who have become bedbound through age or illness, can need a lot of hands-on care. This can include help with bathing and toileting, or if those skills have been lost, carers can assist in managing incontinence in a dignified and compassionate manner. Carers at this level will often spend many hours in the elderly person's home, taking care of them, or being ready to spring into action as soon as they are needed. Bedbound people can develop pressure sores (also known as bedsores) from lying in one position all the time. These must be monitored and treated, if not prevented from occurring in the first place. 

Other Services 
Home carers can fulfil a range of other tasks, for example, during illnesses, by taking care of stomas, catheters and PICC lines, helping to change wound dressings, whether from accidental injuries or surgeries, and generally helping the patient to recover safely while in the comfort of their own home. Dementia patients can benefit from being in their own familiar surroundings, with hospital admissions often resulting in worsening of symptoms, distress and even violent reactions as the patient fights being in this unfamiliar environment. Even when otherwise in good health, dementia patients can benefit from full-time carers, looking after them, reassuring them and ensuring that they remain safe, warm and fed. Carers in these situations will often work shifts to ensure that someone is with the patient all the time. 

Each patient or customer will have unique needs that the agency can assess and cater for. If you are worried about your elderly relative or post-medical care loved one, why not find out about home care agency services and see how they can make your life – and that of your loved family member – so much more comfortable?