Home Care

Abstract

With the increasing trend of home care, it is important to understand this sector in great detail and to do so a brief analysis of the industry is required. In common cases, the word home care is for differentiating between custodial or non-medical care (the care provided by people who are not professional doctors or nurses or other licenced medical personnel) with home health care in which licenced medical personnel are involved. The service user directly purchases home care from agencies offering the services independently or as a part of the legal duty of the social services department of local authorities. This paper aims to analyse the home care industry of in detail.

Home Care

Introduction

Home Care is also known as social or domiciliary care and is a supportive health care provided to patients in their homes by professionals of health care. It is also known as formal or home health care. In common cases, the word home care is for differentiating between custodial or non-medical care (the care provided by people who are not professional doctors or nurses or other licenced medical personnel) with home health care in which licenced medical personnel are involved. The service user directly purchases home care from agencies offering the services independently or as a part of the legal duty of the social services department of local authorities. These authorities has to options for providing health care; either through their own employees or through independent agencies. Commonly the frequency of providing care is once or twice a day with the main aim of keeping disabled or weak people independent and healthy (UKHCA, 2011).

Moreover, this care can be turned into a round the clock help by a live-in carer or nurse. The United Kingdom Homecare Association (UKHCA) is a licenced association employing over 1,600 providers of home care across the country. THE UKHCA keeps a list of all the agencies located in the local area, the organisation do so by searching the list of home care providers across the United Kingdom. The organisation also produces a magazine with the name of Homecarer. In addition to this, it also offers a wide range of publications including Accessible Home Health Care, for the home care providers.

Statutory Regulations

Few statutory bodies regulate the home care agencies in three home nations. The function of the regulatory bodies is to make sure that all the home care providers work under the required legislation.

People Involved

The medical personnel who are involved in providing home care include:

Home Care Aids

Licensed nurses

Registered nurses

Social workers

The services of rehabilitation are provided by

Dietitians

Language and Speech pathologists

Occupational therapists

Physical therapists

Training is provided to all home care aides for providing the patients a non-custodial help, for instance, helping with bathing and dressing, getting in and out of their beds. Moreover, it may also occur that home aides prepare meals.

Home Care in the United Kingdom

Currently the home care sector of United Kingdom is suffering from lack of data collection in all of the four regions. In several instances, the statistics and ...