Holiday

Holidays should be booked 28 days in advance. Approval will be at the discretion of the office - two people off at any one time should be the theoretical maximum.

Visit Timing

You should be on time to the first visit of either the AM or PM shift, and aim to arrive within no more than 15 minutes either side of the planned visit times throughout the shift. If you are running late, you should inform the office and not the service user directly. You should inform the office if you are early or delayed by any more than 30 minutes. You should not informally rearrange your visit times without consulting the office.

You should try to fulfil your allocated visit time as far as possible. If visit times are less than the planned duration, this should be by no more than 10 minutes unless the visit is declined or prevented.

If you do need to make visits shorter than the above, we will expect to see an explanation in your visit notes. We expect you to provide some social support to the service user as part of your visit where it is welcomed.

If you need extra time on visits, you will also need to demonstrate the reasons in your notes. Extensions of 15 minutes are generally OK if they are the exception to the rule. For extensions over 15 minutes, you will need to alert the office so that the shift can be managed as necessary.

Sickness and Absence

Sickness and absence should be reported by phone without exception 2 hours before the start of your shift. In all cases, you should phone the main office number and not mobiles.

Out of hours - i.e. after 5pm and at weekends - all calls to the office should be via the main office number which will divert to the on-call.

Rotas

Rotas will be published for each week by the preceding Tuesday - you will have until the end of office hours on Wednesday to flag up any issues. Where possible, we will publish rotas further in advance to help you plan your lives effectively.

We will honour your agreed shift pattern as far as possible, however we do need to meet the needs of our Service Users. We have worked in some flexibility to your rotas for this reason. Where we cannot meet your regular shift pattern, we will negotiate an alternative pattern of work with you.

Where we have to make alterations at short notice, every effort will be made to consult with you and inform you - we will occasionally require you to work outside your planned hours to meet the needs of our Service Users.

Please make your appointments outside expected working hours where possible, i.e between 14:00 & 16:00. Time off for appointments will be at the discretion of the Care Coordinator.

Any changes outside these times - i.e. later than set out here - will be at the discretion of the Care Coordinator. You can swap shifts with another carer by approval in exceptional circumstances - this applies to entire runs and not individual visits with no exceptions.

The Coordinator will consider factors such as whether the other carer can manage the extra workload.

Our work is arranged into runs, which means we cannot remove or swap individual Service Users from your planned shifts. There will be exceptions where you cannot be sent to certain Service Users, but this will be at the discretion of the office. Again, we will prioritise the needs of our Service Users when making these decisions.

You should only be required to work a shift with visits from multiple areas - i.e. outside our regular runs - in exceptional circumstances. We want to minimise your travel as far as possible.

Reporting Concerns

Please alert the office of any concerns by checking ‘alert supervisor’ in your visit notes. This should include pressure areas or sores, medication running low, equipment or supply issues, and changes in behaviour or health. This is not an exhaustive list and common sense should apply - if in doubt, report!

You will need to phone directly for more urgent matters, such as in the event of a fall or similar emergency.