Personal Care
Help with washing and dressing, at your own pace.
Our personal care service provides assistance to individuals with daily activities such as bathing, dressing, and grooming. We focus on ensuring comfort and dignity, offering one-on-one support tailored to individual preferences and needs.
What’s included
- Help with washing: a bath, a shower, or a wash at the sink if that is easier that day
- Getting dressed and undressed, including fiddly buttons, tights and shoes
- Discreet support with the toilet and with continence
- Nail care done properly: cutting, shaping and filing, fingers and toes
- Nails painted in a colour you have chosen, and kept tidy week to week
- Foot care: gentle exfoliating, moisturising and dry skin seen to
- Shaving: legs, underarms or face, whichever you want doing
- Hair brushed and styled, skin creamed, and light makeup if you like to wear it
- A steadying hand getting in and out of bed, or up out of a chair
- Double-up visits, with two of our assistants together, when your care needs two people at once
- A reminder when it is time to take your tablets
- Tidying round afterwards so nothing is left for you to do
Who it’s for
- Anyone who finds washing and dressing hard work on their own
- People home from hospital who need a hand for a few weeks while they get back on their feet
- Someone whose balance or strength has changed and who needs steadying rather than doing for
- Families who have been managing personal care themselves and would rather it was not them
Areas covered
- Wolverhampton
- Bushbury
- Low Hill
- Fordhouses
- Oxley
- Fallings Park
- Tettenhall
- Perton
- Pendeford
- and the surrounding areas
Questions people ask
- The thought of it is mortifying. How do you handle that?
- Gently, and slowly. Nobody is asked to strip off in front of a stranger on the first visit. We come and meet you first, have a cup of tea, and agree what you are comfortable with. Plenty of people start with just a bit of help at the sink and build up from there, and some never want more than that, which is absolutely fine.
- Can you help with medication?
- We can remind you when tablets are due and make sure they are to hand, and we are trained in the safe handling of medicines. Where your district nurse has supplied a cream and asked for it to be put on, we can do that too, working to their instructions. We do not give injections or anything else that is a nurse’s job. That stays with your GP or your district nurse, and we fit around whatever they have arranged.
- Will it be a woman who comes, and will it be the same one?
- Yes to both. Every one of our assistants is female, and you get the same person each visit rather than whoever happens to be on the rota. We visit Monday to Friday, so it is one familiar face all week. At weekends your family or a care agency take over, and arranging that cover is for you to organise. End of life care is the exception: that we provide seven days a week.
- The district nurse only comes twice a week. Can you help in between?
- Often, yes. This is something we do that a lot of providers cannot. We can change a dressing between the nurse’s visits and apply the creams and products they have supplied, keeping everything clean and sterile and following their care plan exactly. Three things have to be true: the district nursing team must know we are helping, all the dressings and creams must come from them, and we work to their instructions rather than our own judgement. Ask your nurse to have a word with us and we will sort it out between us.
- What if I only need help some days?
- That is perfectly normal. Some people want us every weekday morning, some want us twice a week, some only on the weekdays a family member cannot get over. We agree the pattern with you and it can be changed later if it turns out not to suit.
- How do we get started?
- Give us a ring and tell us what is getting difficult. If it sounds like something we can help with, we come out to you at home, free of charge, and write down together exactly what help you want and when. Nothing is signed over the phone and there is no obligation.
Not sure yet? These might help
- How do I know when someone needs help at home?
The changes families usually notice first, what each one tends to mean, and the smallest thing you can do about it.
- Paying for care at home in Wolverhampton: where to start
The free council assessment most people never ask for, the savings limits that decide who pays, and the benefit that is not means-tested. Written for Wolverhampton, with the figures dated.
- Home care or a care home?
An honest comparison, including the money, and the one difference in the means test that catches most families out.
- Looking after someone else: help for family carers
You are entitled to an assessment of your own needs, free, whatever the person you care for decides. Here is what that means and what else is available.
How it works
Have a chat
Give us a ring or send us a message and tell us what you’re finding difficult. There’s no obligation, and nothing to sign. If it’s urgent, say so: we can sometimes start straight away.
Your first visit is free
We come out to you at home, meet you properly, and write down together exactly what help you want and when. There’s no charge for that visit whether or not you go ahead.
Your assistant starts
Your assistant starts visiting on the days and times we’ve agreed together, and we stay in touch to make sure it’s working for you.
