Being either a Live-in carer or an hourly carer both have many benefits and attributes. Have you ever wanted to become a carer, but you are unsure about the difference between a live-in carer and an hourly carer? This post will give you more of a background between the two roles.
First, let’s start off with live-in care.
Helping Hands live in care agency is an established, award-winning home care service which allows our customer to stay in the comfort of their own home in their familiar and relaxed surroundings.
As a live-in carer you will be required to live in the customer’s home and will undertake all the duties detailed in an individually designed care plan which may include personal care, helping them out of bed, washing, dressing, support with continence care and overseeing medication.
However, your most important job is to spend quality time with the customer as their companion, keeping them company and enabling them to be independent.
Read more about what is live in care here.
Do you need experience to be a live-in carer?
Like most jobs having experience is advantageous but not essential when it comes to Helping Hands. When taking the role of live-in carer, we look for people with compassionate nature, good communication skills and a professional approach. Some of our live-in carers in the past have had no experience prior to working at Helping Hands. Each live-in carer will receive induction training before they are placed with their customer.
Being a live-in carer means that you will be spending a lot of quality time with your customer. What if you don’t have anything in common?
At Helping Hands, we put a lot of effort into matching our customers and carers based on personality, location and experience, some placements will require more experience than others, so that means we would never put our carers into situations they cannot handle.
So that’s the basis of live-in care explained, let’s have a look at hourly care.
Hourly visiting homecare at Helping Hands is when our hourly carers are responsible for supporting individuals in their own homes and visiting them on a regular basis. Each visit to a customer will normally last from 30 minutes to a few hours a day.
A full driving license is required as they travel to their customers across the region. This is the main difference between live-in and hourly.
The responsibilities of an hourly carer are very similar to a live-in carer, the severity of the customer’s condition will affect the responsibilities and the duties they will carry out such as helping the customer out of bed, washing, dressing, carrying out domestic duties such as doing the house work and food preparation.
What experience do you need to become an hourly carer?
At Helping Hands, our carers don’t need any specific qualifications or training to become an hourly carer. Whilst being qualified in Health and Social care might be advantageous, it is not absolutely essential. All of our staff receive induction training at their local branch regardless of any experience.
Having a chatty personality, being a good listener, eager to learn and having a proactive attitude is what we’re interested in! Becoming an hourly carer means more flexibility in the hours that you work which is perfect for new parents, people in education or if you have any more life commitments. We also provide a snazzy uniform for you to wear and also provide a generous mileage allowance for your travel.
So that is the basic differences between a live-in care and an hourly carer. Both are very similar in terms of responsibilities but different in the settings and working environment.
You can find a further information about live in care and hourly carers on our website, and also our latest job vacancies.
