Guides

Guides for families and private carers

Everything we've written on arranging private care and working as a private carer, in one place.

Looking for Care

Funding a private carer

There's no single way families pay for private care — most combine their own contribution with one or more of the support routes below, depending on the person's needs and financial circumstances.

Hiring a Private Carer: What to Agree Before You Start

Hiring a private carer directly means there's no agency contract setting the ground rules for you — so it's worth agreeing a few practical things with your carer up front, in the same friendly, straightforward way you'd agree anything else between two people about to be working closely together.

Private carer vs. agency carers

Neither is universally "better" — they trade off differently, and the right fit depends on the situation. Here's how they actually compare.

The role of a private carer

Beyond the definition, what does a private carer actually do, day to day — and what skills and judgement does the role call for?

What is a private carer?

A private carer is a self-employed care worker engaged directly by a family, rather than supplied through a care agency — the same skilled, hands-on support, agreed and paid for without an agency margin sitting in between.

Become a Carer

Agreeing Terms With a Family: A Carer's Guide

Working directly for a family means there's no agency setting the ground rules on your behalf — agreeing a few practical things upfront, in writing, protects the relationship as much as it protects your income.

Becoming a private carer

Working as a private carer means running your own small business alongside the caring itself. Here's what to have in place before you take on your first client.

Building your knowledge as a private carer

Whether you're new to private care or years into it, here's where to focus — the knowledge areas that come up across almost every client relationship.

Carer starter pack

A practical checklist for taking on your first private care client — save it, print it, or just work through it once.

Caring for a Condition

Caring for Someone with a Hearing Impairment

Hearing loss is one of the most common conditions affecting older adults — age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) affects a large proportion of people over 70 to some degree, though it's often under-reported and under-treated, partly because it develops so gradually that it's easy to adapt around without realising how much has changed.

Caring for Someone with a Visual Impairment

Vision loss in older adults is often gradual, and commonly caused by conditions like macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, or diabetic retinopathy. Each affects sight differently — macular degeneration typically affects central vision, glaucoma affects peripheral vision, and cataracts cause overall blurring — so the practical impact varies a lot from person to person, even within "visual impairment" as a category.

Caring for Someone with Arthritis

Arthritis covers a range of conditions that cause joint pain, stiffness, and inflammation. Osteoarthritis — wear and tear on joint cartilage over time — is the most common form in older adults, but rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune condition, is also common and behaves quite differently, with flare-ups and more widespread inflammation.

Caring for Someone with COPD

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a group of lung conditions — including chronic bronchitis and emphysema — that cause narrowed airways and make breathing progressively harder. It's a long-term condition that's usually managed rather than cured, and day-to-day life with COPD is shaped as much by pacing and environment as it is by medication.

Caring for Someone with Dementia

Dementia is an umbrella term for a group of symptoms — memory loss, confusion, changes in mood or behaviour — caused by conditions that affect the brain over time. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause, but vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia are also common. Each progresses differently, but most families face a similar set of practical challenges along the way.

Caring for Someone with Diabetes

Diabetes is a condition where blood sugar levels aren't regulated properly, either because the body doesn't produce enough insulin (Type 1, or Type 2 in its later stages) or doesn't use it effectively (Type 2, the more common form in older adults). Left poorly managed, it increases the risk of complications affecting the heart, eyes, kidneys, feet, and nerves — but day-to-day, good management is often about consistent, unglamorous routine.

Caring for Someone with Heart Failure

Heart failure means the heart isn't pumping blood around the body as effectively as it should — it doesn't mean the heart has stopped working, but that it's working less efficiently, often leading to fluid building up in the lungs, legs, or abdomen. It's a common long-term condition in older adults, and while it can't usually be cured, it can often be well managed with the right routine.

Caring for Someone with Parkinson's

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological condition that affects movement, caused by a loss of dopamine-producing cells in the brain. It's best known for tremor, but it affects far more than movement alone — balance, speech, sleep, and mood are commonly involved too, and symptoms and their severity vary a great deal from person to person.

Supporting Stroke Recovery

A stroke happens when blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted, causing brain cells to be damaged or die. What recovery looks like afterward depends heavily on which part of the brain was affected and how quickly treatment was given — some people recover most function within weeks, others face longer-term changes to movement, speech, or cognition.