Introduction
For over 14 years, Aster Care has been providing care at home services to people with long-term conditions who would not be safe to be left alone. Our work is generally ongoing and permanent.
However, we recognise that there is a need for some informal carers to have a staff member come and sit with their loved one whilst they go out. This could be for a couple of hours just as a one-off, ad hoc, or on a regular basis. This is often known as a ‘Sitting’ or ‘Companionship’, whereby personal care can be carried out during the visit if required, but can also be to take the person out, play games, talk or undertake activities within the time frame.
What could it be used for?
The Sitting Service can be used by informal carers; a partner, relative or a friend who is supporting a frail or disabled adult at home. Some informal carers manage without any intervention from Adult Services or any regular formal care, but may on occasions require someone to ‘sit’ with their loved one when there is a need to leave the house. Examples for using the Sitting Service could be as follows when the informal carer needs to:-
- Attend their own medical appointments
- Attend hair or beauty consultations, etc
- To undertake training, i.e., a moving and handling course
- To attend education, i.e., night school for a course
- To go to the theatre or cinema
- To go out for the day
- To go on holiday
What can our staff do?
Our trained and vetted staff all work with people who have long-term conditions such as complex dementia, neurological conditions, stroke, and can manage some nursing procedures with additional training such as PEG feeds, complex medication and non-invasive ventilation support. However, they do not need to do anything complex at all; if all that is needed is company and to keep the person safe, we can do this too! Your loved one will be safe with us, and enjoy the company of the care worker we send.
What happens next?
We try to keep the process simple. However, we want our Sitting Service clients to receive the same high level of service as our regular clients, and so we will undertake the following:-
- We will contact you by telephone to arrange to come and meet your loved one in their home setting to undertake a brief needs assessment. This is shorter than our usual assessments and a key part of us finding out what is is important to you. This enables us to draw up a succinct, personalised care plan so a staff member can be matched to deliver the care to your wishes.
- We will carry out a risk assessment of the home for legal purposes. This is a brief walkabout of the property where we find out which areas you are happy for the staff member to access and work in. We will also undertake a visual check of any electrical items you may wish for us to use.
This process will take only 1-1.5 hours and is free of charge!
What happens after the visit?
We will contact you a day or two following the visit to get some feedback as to what you thought about our service, our staff, and how your loved one responded. This will help us to give feedback to our staff teams, and know what we are getting right, or where we need to make improvements.
We will also store your records securely for the requisite period of time, which can be used for the basis of any further Sitting Service visits you may require. A quick check to ensure the information we hold is still up to date could speed up the response to any further planned visits, or emergency care should we have the capacity to do so.
To find out about more about Aster Care and what we do, follow the link:
