Experiences of homecare/support services
This report focuses on the support people get to remain in their own home when they need help with things such as eating, drinking, and personal care.
We collected over 40 hours of lived experiences through face-to-face and phone interviews with 28 people. A further 20 people gave us their experiences through self-completion surveys.
We also met with each of the seven Home Support agencies commissioned by the City Council.
We found that:
- People value their care and are aware that they would find life more challenging/difficult without it
- People are aware of the limitations of their care and are a willing to make allowances for carers who have other clients/tasks to attend to
- We found different experiences between people with more straightforward care needs (e.g. getting up in the morning, preparing meals) and those with complex or multiple issues requiring more support.
- People asked for better communication e.g. about changes to times of visits
- For agencies, recruitment and retention of staff was an issue
- We saw a mixed picture of care, staff training, and service users also highlighted some gaps in training. Therefore, we recommended work is needed locally to support the training of care workers
- Some people were concerned about raising issues or complaints as they thought their care would be impacted – so we recommended that the Council takes steps to ensure people feel comfortable raising concerns
- We also asked for more opportunities for sharing of good practice and service development
Downloads
Read our report and the response we got from Coventry City Council
Full report Home support/care services in Coventry: user experiences
Summary report
