care assistant

in home caregiver

caregiver

elder care assistant

home assistant

Home Instead Senior Care

Its extremely easy to get a job with this company. I had no care background what so ever but im a nice, caring person so they took me on. The training was for several days and it was intense. You will need to give 6 personal references, and 3 professional ones.

The problem I had was with the management. I had several issues while working with home instead...

1. when i had my first wage slip the amount i was paid per hour was min wage, in the interview i was told it was £7.75. And i was also told that the mileage cost per mile was 0.41p, my wage slip showed 0.20p per mile. The amount they paid me wasnt the true to the mileage i had put on my time sheet for a start, and secondly it wasnt enough for what i had spend in fuel costs. Baring in mind that my car is modern and is only 1.4 so fuel economy is very good, but i was still short on the mileage cost they paid me by about £50.

2. I had one client who was verbally abusive to me from the start, i had a few calls and complained and said to management that I did not want to see this client (according to their 'golden rules' YOU have a RIGHT to not see a client your do not wish too), their answer to that was basically 'no, you will see this client and you have no say in this', this was extremely stressful and made me extremely anxious as they kept giving all their calls to me...my guess is that i was the only person left to say no to this client out of all the other caregivers.

3. Positions are part time, but felt like i was working 60+ hours due to all the traveling, i was working every day of the week, in and out, in and out in and out, i did not have any time in between to arrange personal life stuff as I would need to allow 40 mins travel time to most clients, they had many closer clients to me and i kept making a point to say that the traveling time that you DONT GET PAID FOR (other that 0.20p per mile fuel) was too much and could i possibly get more that are closer, nothing was done about this and so my miles per week were 350-450 miles, most weeks my hours traveled were more than my actual call hours. Rotas are different every week which means you cant really plan anything in advance and they are constantly calling you at all hours of the day and night to get you to take on other peoples shifts. And they also try to sneak in more hours on your rota, which is ok if you want the extra ones, but bare in mind that youll be contracted for just 20.

Also think carefully about your 'availability' times, if you put from before 8am to 10pm, be aware that they WILL take advantage of that and give you 6/7am calls and then throughout the day until 12 midnight, to then expect you to then do the same day in and day out.

4. The management at the office i worked for were the most unprofessional people i have ever met. None of them had people skills or HR skills what so ever. When I quit the job after a very short time, I went to exit interview and was told i must work 4 weeks notice, which i was in no way going to do after the experience i had had with them, In the exit interview i was looked over on a table by one of the managers who quite literally shouted, swore and talked over me like i was some kind of criminal, They threatened that they woulr 'make sure i would never work in care ever again' and 'not pay me the several weeks pay still outstanding'. for a few days between handing my notice in and this exit interview i was harassed with emails, calls and voicemail notifications all day and night to the point where i had to turn off my phone.

5. When training they do a lot of how-to-lift correctly etc, and say that when visiting peoples homes that their home is assessed to make sure you dont need to be bending over to reach things, this was never the case, i was in agony with back pain after every day because i was reaching over beds to change people, pushing extremely heavy wheelchairs, reaching over units to open curtains/blinds/windows, reaching high shelves for items for clients, and some i even had to sit on the floor to cloth people as their was not proper seating or enough area.

This company will always be quids in for themselves and over work their employees, when they offer no training (like they say they do) or job benefits what so ever, and minimum wage, then short-change you for fuel costs, management dont want to help with any issues what so ever. They just dont plain care.
Absolutely disgusting company.

The only good points i found to working for this particular office were the clients, I loved visiting the clients and got on extremely well with them, but when you take into account that all the work youre doing for min wage and then paying for half the petrol yourself, it quickly makes you see that its not a long term option.

Franchise based so the dynamics of one branch aren’t necessarily the same as the rest, could be better/could be worse. Likes to boast about their status within the senior care industry, which admittedly is up there and they have won awards for the quality of care, but sadly as an employer a lot is left to be desired. 

Good quality training? In most cases, it seems, yes! , Do you get paid for attending four full days training? No! What kind of employer doesn’t pay their staff to attend training that is not optional? HI do as your job offer doesn’t come until after you’ve attended the training. They also want you to pay for your own, also not optional, DBS check and upgrading your insurance to business class 1.

So you give them four days of your unpaid time, you pay £54 for DBS clearance. You get a zero hour contract and you start off with say 6 client appointments building up to 10. Or four a week. Or nothing. You could be one of those unlucky applicants who have spent money in order to secure a job but are left waiting weeks before any offer of work comes their way!?! Or, you could be eased in gently for 1-2 weeks then suddenly given a busy 6 day rota that will have you on the road all day, sitting in traffic between appointments that are 6-8 miles away from eachother, stressing about getting to your next client on time, no time to eat let alone rest, the office calling to find out where you are and pestering you to take on extra duties on your days off. If you turn out to be “not a team player” and don’t take on additional short notice/day off hours you’ll probably notice HI’s childish response in your next rota which will be suspiciously sparse in the way of client appointments offered. 

HI like to highlight their “competitive rates of pay” which are “above minimum wage”. What they don’t draw attention to is that your hourly rate doesn’t commence until you arrive at your client’s home and ends when you leave. Your time, fuel and wear n’ tear on your vehicle while you’re driving to and from appointments comes out of your own pocket. HMRC rules prevent you from claiming mileage allowance for the first ten miles of each day and HI do not pay for mileage in between back to back appointments. The rate that you can claim mileage back at, if you get that far, falls miserably short of the financial loss you’ve endured to perform the job, even with the enhanced rate for driving your clients shopping etc. 

The office culture can be cliquey. Brown-nosing seems to escalate you up in the ranks of popularity but if your face just fits; quite simply they’ll love you. Pay errors are sadly way too common and way too unnecessarily complicated to have rectified. 

Last but not least, the clients are what give this job some semblance of sustainability. The clients are warm, friendly, appreciative and it’s very difficult not to become attached. The work is rewarding and heart warming if you’re resolute and prepared for what you could be dealing with. If you’re retired or a stay-at-home parent while the children are at school and like to get out there to meet, talk to and care for the elder generation for a modest salary then this is the ideal job for you. 

But, if you have a family and need to work to earn a living, I’ll be honest and tell you it won’t happen as a carer with HI. Their work model is not tangible to allow you to work 10-20 hours a week and afford to pay some bills and maintain your car. You could earn decent money by doing 35-50 hours a week but there’d be absolutely no work-life balance

Training was pretty useless. There was extremely basic first aid, all things you should know if you have any common sense. The rest was long boring talks followed by quizzes, which although were easy and all but a moron wouldn't know, they told us the answers to and exactly what to write.

Ridiculously long hours at first. Due to a difficult client, was often finishing at midnight, having a half hour drive home, then up at 7 to get ready and travel to the first client of the day. When I asked not to have the early hours always following the late, my hours were drastically cut down. Constantly told I would be given more hours only to have them whittled down to two or three hours a week!

Some lovely colleagues, some absolutely awful. The least of the awful was backstabbing and badmouthing by certain people who I had barely met, but was just because I lived in a different town. The worst was being threatened by one particularly nasty specimen. Incidentally reported this same 'caregiver' for injuring a client as she constantly performed illegal lifts while handling them, leading to a nasty skin lesion which became infected. When I reported her I was told by the senior member of staff to keep my mouth shut and be careful who I messed with. This was the level of professionalism throughout. This same senior called me 'stupid' when I was observed following hygiene procedures that we had been told to do, because it was 'over the top'.

Was hauled in twice and given warnings for things that I had not done (and proved so) but they just seemed very eager to show their superiority and facts didn't come into it.

This does not even begin to cover the severe lack of organisation throughout - not informing staff that calls had been cancelled, not informing clients of changes in times or caregivers (most clients were aware of how much of a state the office were in and took this in their stride, others not so much and many of us have spent most of the call being yelled at for the office's mistakes).

Constantly called on days off to cover calls, when you can't do it they say it's absolutely fine, but you will see their displeasure reflected in your future hours.

Procedures are constantly changed, staff not informed and then reprimanded for not being aware of the changes. Was not told to fill a certain (new) form out so did not receive any petrol money for a month of driving a new client around - the same client who ended the contract after this month as she felt pressured to pay for more call hours by senior staff.

When it comes right down to it the only thing the company is interested in is how they look (very different from what actually goes on there) and making money. They make a big show of caring about their clients but when you want to do your job and actually help people, the bottom line is all they're concerned with.

If they take a liking to you, it might be great to work there, if not then it's utter torture that ends up costing you a fortune.

Worked for Home Instead, Nailsea, for 7 months. At first, the manager who was there at the start of my employment was awful. The new manager employed after this made the franchise much more better and more organised. One member of staff in the office is rather intimidating and talks down to you, other employees I worked with left because of their attitude towards those employees. That said staff member did not deal with a safe guarding issue appropriately which was rather shocking - told the new manager this upon leaving which hopefully sorts the way they deal with safe guarding issues in the future. The clients I had were absolutely lovely and they fully appreciate you looking after them. The training I received could have been better, however, new employees get good training now. Visits are hourly or two hours mostly. You have 15 minutes to travel between clients which sometimes is no where near enough, an example of one half shift I did seen me start at Long Ashton then travelling to Portishead and then back on myself to Backwell and so on, you are late most of the time for the rest of the shift if you have to travel to areas back and forth at those distances. It is even worse when you have a visit requiring two carers and you have to wait for the other carer to arrive, sometimes they arrive really late which makes you late for the rest of your shift as the rota is not planned out well in terms of having a carer closer to the destination rather than having a carer who is half hour away from the destination. Mostly understanding if there is a day you can not work (e.g. vomiting or your car has broken down) but tend to not be happy with you. The person who deals with pay and finances in the office does not respond to their emails often. It's nice that you go to different places instead of being fixed to one place all the time and you do not get badgered by management often unless you are late or have no signal to clock in for your visit. The company looks after their clients really well but not their employees as much. There are unexplained deductions in your payslips sometimes, overtime not always paid, tax is not deducted from your wages so be careful and no pension scheme. The clients kept me in the job. Make sure you put specific availability and not just say you are available any time because the company will take advantage of that and cause you to feel majorly exhausted and fatigued with long hours and a nine day wait for a day off.

Would absolutely never recommend Home Instead as a place to work.

They promise so much and deliver virtually nothing. Started okay, the lack of hours was a concern from the beginning. Was constantly being told more clients are coming and they had “plans in the pipeline”, but more often than not they never came through. 
I was personally matched very well with my clients but the promise of having a team of four carers to each client was never met. Went to clients who told me I was the 13th person they had seen. They are constantly hiring even though they don’t have the hours to sustain the carers already there. 
The office staff seem to prioritise the wrong carers. They will happily accommodate for the carers who moan and do minimal work but God forbid one of the hard working carers needs some leeway. They allow toxic and petty notes to be left on clients records by carers and there are no repercussions. You’re told in the training (like in pretty much every care role) that you don’t write your opinions, but the office allow carers to write their passive aggressive notes that family members have access to. It makes the carers look incompetent.
If the hours pick up and you agree to do extra, you are then plagued by the office to be picking up hours when someone calls in sick. You are made to feel guilty for saying no to extra shifts. If you say no you are given a well rehearsed speech of “well we’ll probably have to cancel the visit for the client”.
Had double up visits where both of us carers had phone calls asking to cover a visit and both of us were told that “every avenue had been looked at” when quite clearly it was a guilt tactic. 
The communication within the office is shocking. Had multiple occasions where two people phoned me about the same issue and as they had not told anyone, neither knew anything about it.
They don’t listen to carers when they report back about clients. Clients needs, wants and opinions are not always listened to. Many of the clients love their carers but don’t like how the office staff are with them. Clients would discuss with me some of their issues and when I would tell them to report it to the office, they would not want to as they didn’t feel supported. 
This company only cares about money and their reputation, they seem to forget they are a CARE company. 

They have lost far too many good carers due to being badly run. Don’t expect to be respected in this job. They do not take the mental health of carers seriously and will work you to the bone if you let them. The staff turnaround is the biggest red flag I ignored. 

A typical day at work would consist of looking through your weekly or monthly schedule to see which clients home you would be visiting. I was told at the beginning of my employment that the company was highly organised and would give you schedules over a week in advance, although I quickly found I was receiving them less that 24 hours before I was due to go to a call. I'd say one of the very few positive things about this job was the clients themselves, as they were mostly very lovely people, and the training process. I found my training to be informative and thorough and also did shadow shifts with experienced carers to learn about each client before having them myself.
The cons more than outweigh the pros to say the least. I found within a few weeks of working that when I had any free time between calls, which was not often, I was being called and asked to help cover shifts within the hour. I reluctantly accepted to help up until before actually leaving the company.
At one point, the company made me work 21 days in a row, all over 16 hours a day give or take my travelling. I had to call up after 21 days to ask for at least one day off a week to which they didn't seem all that happy to agree on as they were short staffed. 
I eventually was coming close to handing in my notice as I was due to move house and area and would have been unable to commute, but upon my last month I arrived at a clients to find another carer with them. When calling the management they told me there was nothing they could do and sent me home from a call that lasted 7 hours and was half away from where I actually lived. I handed in my notice that week, and as soon as I did the company gave me 0 hours for the remaining month until I had left in the June.
I found the management appalling and many of the other carers left before I did for the same reasons. I felt that if I didn't work myself to the point of passing out, they were rude and would almost punish you by dropping your hours, their organisation is a huge concern as it is not acceptable to be receiving your schedule at 11 pm at night when you have a call at 8 am that morning.
I shall not go into the amount of times I had to call up to complain for the clients, as that is quite personal, but some clients have also felt uncomfortable and actually left the company. My wages were always incorrect and I was having to call up about that very often and sometimes wait up to another week before it went in.

Very disappointing experience overall. I was very eager to gain some experience in care work to go hand in hand with my university degree and I didn't want to work for any care company that only gave my 15 mins per call. Home Instead claimed they weren't that. Here's my experience with them.

Called them in January after seeing a job advertised on indeed.com where they explained who they were and invited me for an interview.
Attended this and made it clear as I was studying at university, my availability was 2-3 days a week but the hours in this were flexible. They said at this point this was not a problem as I could work with a client for a couple of days in the week, then someone else could work with them the other days.

Attended 4 days of unpaid training at the start of Feb, chased my 4 references (4 needed because they are a premium care company) for them in order for me to start at the end of Feb.
Completed training and references received, I was cleared for work, given my badge, bag and certificate. Was told I'd be called in the week about shifts.

Then.....nothing. I waited a week for the call from the scheduler then called the office myself, who said the scheduler would be in touch.
A week later, I received a call. The lady stated that due to my availability - which I was told would not be a problem at interview - they could not offer me any work at the moment. I raised that this information was different to what I had been told the whole way through the process and that had I known this, I wouldn't have attended the 4 day training when I could have been applying for other posts.

She replied that she DID have clients to fit my availability, but they were too far away from my location. I queried how far was too far....
4-5 miles came the reply.I said I was happy to travel up to 10 miles for a client and that location and mileage I was willing to travel had never been discussed with me, so how could she presume it would be too far. She then backtracked saying the clients weren't suitable.

That was mid March - I've not heard anything from them since then. Oh, apart from a few texts about forwarding them my car insurance. When I replied that I had never changed my car insurance to business as I had not received any work, I had no response, unsurprisingly!

They train new caregivers every 2 weeks and, unfortunately, my gut instinct was right. They want you on their books, but they don't have the work. So pretty much your standard agency, despite claiming to be different.

I would not recommend working for this company based on my experience.
Throughout my employment, I often felt uncomfortable with the way I was treated. The manner in which I was spoken to over the phone, the way questions were answered, and the general attitude shown towards me whenever I visited the office left me feeling undervalued and unwelcome. Whenever I sought clarification or asked questions, I frequently felt as though staff were frustrated by my enquiries rather than willing to provide support.
I was open and honest about my ADHD from the very beginning of my employment, including during my interview. Despite this, I do not feel that appropriate understanding or support was provided. I requested reasonable adjustments to help improve both my wellbeing and performance at work, including clear task prioritisation, structured handovers, advance notice of rota changes, greater consistency in shift patterns, and brief opportunities to reset during particularly busy shifts. These were straightforward and reasonable requests, yet I saw little to no meaningful action taken following discussions with management.
I also experienced comments that I felt were dismissive and insensitive regarding my emotional response to the passing of a client. Rather than receiving understanding, my feelings were minimised, which I found upsetting and unprofessional.
In addition, commitments discussed during the recruitment process regarding contracted hours were not honoured. When alternative arrangements were later offered, I was advised that I could potentially be required to repay wages if there was insufficient work available, something I have since been informed was incorrect advice.
Overall, I felt unsupported, unheard, and treated differently from other employees. The lack of understanding around neurodiversity, failure to implement reasonable adjustments, poor communication, and inconsistent treatment had a significant impact on my wellbeing. My experience left me extremely disappointed and is the reason I would not recommend this employer.

I had worked at Home Instead for a few months and that was long enough to know that they don't actually care about their clientele or staff.  Right off the bat they'll give you false promises about giving you unlimited support, better pay and better hours. However I had not seen all of these and neither have staff that have been with the company longer than I have. The male carers don't get enough hours in as there isn't many male clients to go to and the female carers are constantly overworked due to the imbalance of carer to client ratio. Schedules will always change, so if you finish early one day DO NOT make plans as they will add something onto you in some way, most likely without notifying you. Another thing to add is that they won't stay within your availability most of the time and make up excuses when you ask them to revisit your availability. In regards to support, it's basically non existent. When I went into the office I told them I felt overwhelmed as I felt overworked and I requested to step back a little bit so I can have more balance and spend more time with family. However their response was to to keep working and as a result gave me more hours than I usually get which resulted in my decision to hand in my notice. One thing I will say is that I Love the job, the clients and the carers that I work with. The main issue is the office and how they deal with their problems. Normally when you see that you're losing more staff than gaining staff you see it as an issue that needs to be fixed on your part. However, they don't see this as an issue on their part and more of an issue on our part which I think is very audacious and just very unprofessional. There is a lot more I could say about this company but it would take me several years to be able to type down everything. I hope this is useful and for anyone who wants to work for this company please do so with caution and keep hold of any documentation to protect yourself.

I had never worked for a senior care company before but had heard good things about Home Instead, prior to interview. 

The clients are well matched to Caregivers and a typical day would be assisting clients with medication, preparing meals, helping with their personal care/movement around their homes and being a friendly face/person to chat to. No day is the same, clients with varying levels of needs. I feel I've made a difference to that person by the time I leave, which makes it rewarding. 

My initial weeks training was excellent - considering I had never worked in this sector, it was easy to understand, thorough and any questions I had, were answered (and I asked a lot!). Since visiting clients, I've been involved in further training, had lots of support from the office and been spurred on by my clients, to investigate things such as Parkinson's Disease, so I can help further. 

The office team (mainly all women), actively encourage Caregivers to pop in, offload and discuss anything confidentially. There are challenging days, for example: difficult clients, issues with families or when a client passes away. If anything becomes too much, I can just call or email the office and it will be dealt with. It can be isolating at times but with the introduction of a coffee morning in the office (the times/days change every 2 weeks to fit in with schedules), it gives a good opportunity to meet other Caregivers, who may share the same clients and experiences. 

The hours are negotiable to fit in with your work/life balance, which is one of the main reasons I opted to take this role, plus getting to help others chat constantly! The pay isn't great but in line with other competitors. At the end of the day, if you want a rewarding job with lots of driving around and the chance to help the elderly with hours to suit, this might be for you.

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