Frequently asked questions
Q: How do you decide what level of care is required by each of your clients?
A: The care we provide is based on a thorough assessment of initial needs made in conjunction with care managers, other health care professionals, family members and the individual service user themselves. It is constantly monitored and adjusted based on feedback to ensure it enables users to live as full and interesting a life as possible.
Q: What types of care do you provide?
A: We provide a wide range of care services on a flexible basis which respond to each individual’s needs over time. These services include personal care, social care, domestic care and the assistance with meals and dietary care. We aim to provide as comprehensive a care package as required, but must acknowledge that we are not authorised to perform certain services. Please enquire for details.
Q: Who can benefit from your service provision?
A: A wide range of people can benefit from our services, but the majority of our clients are older people who need assistance to cope with life’s challenges whilst retaining the independence which comes from being able to live in their own home. However, we also provide care to people with mental health problems, people with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and younger people, perhaps with learning disabilities, autism, or Down’s syndrome, for example. We also care for people with reduced mobility, and with hearing and eyesight difficulties.
Q: What ensures you can provide the standards of care a loving family will insist on?
A: We have developed an organisation structure, philosophy and culture, together with a range of policies and procedures, which establishes the delivery of care at every stage of the relationship, to ensure all exceeds the standards required. Our process takes clients through an initial assessment, an agreement about services required, the assignment of care workers based on each client’s care needs and the skills of each worker, plus a schedule of regular reviews of the care support plan.
Q: How do you capture the formal agreement with each client?
A: We agree a service user guide including a log sheet, which is used to monitor all activity, and record information about the services provided for relatives, other support workers, doctors and other health service providers. This can be reviewed and the services specified can be adjusted at any time, as long as it is within our ability to do so.
Q: So who pays for these services?
A: That depends upon who has arranged for their provision. If your care has been arranged by a social worker and the local authority is the purchaser, then you do not pay MBI Homecare for the service. The local authority does. However, in some cases, local authorities seek a contribution from the service user, dependent upon the assessment of needs and available means to pay. If this is the case, then your social worker will make the arrangements and provide all necessary details to you. If you are a private service user, then you will be charged for all services provided by an MBI Homecare employee. These charges cover our costs of employment, plus our overhead and operating costs and the margin we make for organising the service.
Q: How do we know we are getting the services we are paying for?
A: The service user guide will specify what should be done and when. We work a timesheet system, and ask all clients to countersign the timesheets after each care visit to record the time worked. These timesheets form the basis of our invoices to you, and so it is in your interests to get them signed regularly.
Q: Can you cope with my elderly mother, who doesn’t speak very good English?
A: We expect that we can, because our staff base comes from a wide range of countries. At the last count, we had 17 different languages available to offer, all to mother-tongue standard, which means we can provide the important elements of social care involving conversations, and negotiating with other providers and suppliers, as well as helping with form-filling, for example.
Q: What would you say are the key characteristics of excellent home care?