Our own Registered Care Manager, Denise Pitts, was joined by John B Tannen of Mansfield Radio 1032.2 as well as relatives of clients, including the locally well-known business owner, Jono Edwards.

They answered many frequently asked questions from the general public about the home care sector in general and the process of finding home care, and dissolved some common misconceptions.

The aim of the session was to raise the awareness of help at home amongst the general public. We wanted to advise people that it isn’t always solely personal care; there are many other services that we – and companies alike – offer. Help at home such as meal preparation, medication assistance, support with shopping trips and companionship are just some of the services that we offer.

We also wanted to provide as much information as possible about where you can turn if you think yourself or a loved one needs home care or help at home. Including where to find the best company local to yourself, where to find genuine reviews from clients and staff members and where to find information about how it can be funded.

As part of the session, we discussed the journey you can expect to go on into home care. Jono and Maureen very kindly offered their own touching experiences of finding the right care for their family members. From those initial internet searches, through the phone calls and consultations. The application forms and assessments, right through to meeting your home care assistants. They discussed the pitfalls and stumbles they came across, including difficulties with other health care services. They also spoke about some of the concerns they had with us, which we worked effectively together to put right.

Some of the questions we had submitted, included:

• What is a managed service?
• What is a direct payment?
• Who is a self funder?
• What is Continuing Health Care?
• How do I arrange a care assessment?
• Where do I go if I am unhappy with my care?
• How do I pay for home care?
• How does a financial assessment work?
• Will I get the same carers on each visit?
• Will I still need to see my GP?
• What is a Personal Independence Payment?
• What is an Attendance Allowance?
• Can I get help taking my medications?
• Does your company stick to their visit times?
• I don’t live locally, how can I find out how my relative is doing?
• Do you do client introduction visits?

We hope that the answers that Denise, Jono and Maureen gave were helpful and informative.

If there’s anything you’d like to know that we didn’t cover, you can find more on our Useful Information page, or please just get in touch. We’re happy to help and offer advice in any way we can.

As a team, we’re very happy with how the event went and we’re already thinking about how we can do something similar in the future.

So, if you didn’t get chance to watch us Live, please watch the recording of the Facebook Live session here.

We’d really appreciate feedback and suggestions so that we can build on this and make the next event better, as well as improve the services we offer.