If your parent has (paid for) care at home what do they do?

Or even a bin* not a bib!

I wouldn't be prepared to pay £21 per hour for what you are prepared to do. There is nothing to putting a bib out. Families pay for carers to save them having to go around themselves but end up having to do it anyway.

OP is the £36 for two carers?

I have only spoken with one private carer but she charges £20 per hour.

Cooking is tricky. Even if there was time few of the carers we had could cook English food (so they said) ie pasta, stew, chicken, soup. Even if I left recipes they wouldn't do it. They mostly heated up microwave meals. Meds, they would tell the client to take them but not administer. I also had to get someone to do nails. We had 30-60 min visits topped up by cleaner who would do shopping but it wasa very fiddly patchwork. Bath and hair didn't happen often.

You are paying a lot per hour! HI are notoriously expensive as they only service self-funders ie private clients. If you phone around you will find significantly cheaper and companies who will take on 30 or 45 minute calls.
Family prepared medication is not allowed to be given as the carers have no idea what the medication is therefore your mum is classed as self-medicating. You could be putting arsenic tablets in for all they know (of course you aren't) but they and their company would be held responsible by the CQC should they inadvertently cause your mum harm or worse.
As others have said the pharmacy will prepare a sealed blister pack and even deliver. The carers will then be able to give her medication when they visit once it's been documented by the agency and added to the care plan.
You need to be very specific about what you need them to do and I have no idea why they are refusing to do light domestic work/put bins out etc. Sounds rather precious to me.

I had a carer come in when I had surgery. She would make a light breakfast, help me shower and dress, take the rubbish up to the bin if I asked. She couldn't touch my meds. Some were controlled drugs (e.g oromorph) and they weren't allowed to give it to me but they would open the bottle as I couldn't. She was brilliant but long term you would have to employ a cleaner, at least to do light housework and take bins out etc. Carers are very pushed for time and they have to write up their notes within their time. I couldn't fault her though.

Very jealous of the meals on wheels. Sadly my mum’s area don’t do them. No private suppliers either.

Meals on wheels are good. Mum.has them 3 days a week and as pp said,it means someone is going in on these days. On Mondays her friend comes and they have a sandwich and cake lunch, and on Fridays she goes to her old biddies class where she gets a cooked lunch

My parent pays £32 an hour. She used to use Home Instead but recently swopped.
Her current and former agency are
very flexible on what they will do. The only real obstacles are safety (eg no climbing ladders) and ability. They iron (some carers say they don’t like it and are t very good at it but don’t refuse), clean, cook (again, it would be pot luck as none are
trained chefs)would put bins out, make calls on a clients behalf (one carer has the Midas touch with getting organisations to do stuff), put the washer on, take my parent out to the garden. Reading some of the responses here I feel lucky!

on the bins, given enough time with a client to prioritise and deliver key needs, I would see it as pretty inflexible to refuse point blank to do them. Both agencies my parent has used have communication systems for what needs to be done and what has been done so it would be picked up there. That said, most councils have a service for the elderly and disabled who are unable to move them - I arranged this for my parent. If I hadn’t, the agency would have pointed it out to me and/or helped arrange it.

I might as well get a cleaner twice a week, get a mobile hairdresser once a week and do the rest myself. That doesn’t sound unreasonable. Have a look if meals on wheels is available in your area. It doesn’t just give a meal, it gives someone to check on her each day.

Can you get your mums medicines delivered in a NOMAD each week from pharmacy? We have that now and they are all portioned out by day and time.( I think Nomad might be the Scottish term for these boxes)

justgettingthroughtheday

Is there a register of self employed carers and what credentials would I be looking for? My friend is trying to get the right kind of care for her father, who can self fund.

Sorry for the thread derail.
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Oh also, if your mum has good neighbours, they might be willing to put her bin out when they do their own.

My dad's neighbour happily does this for him. If I had an elderly neighbour, I'd be very happy to do this too.

My dad has carers twice a day but they won't do medication either. I sort out his meds once a week and use a box with the days of the week on it. It's left on the kitchen table and he always takes his morning lot with breakfast and evenings with dinner.

The carers help him to get dressed, will give him a shave and will put any dishes he's used in the dishwasher. They'll also empty wastepaper baskets but that's about it. My dad also has a cleaner who comes in once a month to do a really good deep clean. Everything else, for example bins, washing, general tidying, house repairs etc are all done by me. I batch cook and leave things in the freezer which the carers microwave.

If you're looking to save money, you could reduce the care company's visits to 30 or 45 minutes. An hour is a long time if they don't seem to be doing very much.

Dad has carers who get him up and showered in the morning and give him breakfast. In the evening they fit his sheath catheter and put him to bed.

There's no cleaning but they do help my mum make up the bed when she has to change it. No cooking either though they heated meals for dad when mum was in hospital.

My parents had a private carer and she would make sandwiches or heat food up, help them make the beds, pop a wash load on/ put it out, personal care, and remind mum to take her medication out of the pharmacist made up dosset box/ blister pack. They then had a very understanding cleaner once a week as well

Cleaners that we pay for privately. They are lovely and as well as cleaning thoroughly will make mum a cup of tea and a sandwich,put the washing on,empty bins etc. £ 15 per hour

I would switch care providers. Even at her most frail, MIL only ever needed an hour long call when she had a bath. Someone up thread mentioned Blue Bird and I would second that.

Did the current ones come and do a proper needs assessment? Most care providers can give meds as long as the repeats list from the GP or a hospital discharge sheet is available.

My MIL had carers specifically to make sure she took her dementia medication, this was required by the hospital as they wouldn’t prescribe it without knowing it would actually be taken.