Palliative care at home is care that helps someone live as well as possible with a serious illness. End-of-life care is when someone is thought to be in their final months, weeks or days. Helping at Home supports both across Newark, Grantham, Bingham, Retford, Ollerton, Southwell and surrounding villages. We work alongside community nurses, GPs and hospice teams.
CQC-regulated and rated Good. Registered Manager Courtney Pike. 9.9/10 on homecare.co.uk.
What this kind of care looks like in practice
People often picture end-of-life care as a single intense moment near the end, but most of the time it isn’t. It’s weeks or months of regular, calm visits that help someone stay at home, stay comfortable, and keep their routine for as long as that’s possible.
Day to day, it can include:
- Personal care (washing, dressing, oral care, hair care) at a pace that suits how the person is feeling that day.
- Help with eating and drinking when appetite is low.
- Medication prompts and administration of prescribed medicines (including controlled drugs where signed off and within scope).
- Pressure area care and skin checks.
- Repositioning and help with movement, using a hoist if needed.
- Catheter and stoma care.
- Quiet company at difficult moments. Sometimes that’s the most important thing.
- Overnight care, sleeping nights or waking nights, depending on the care plan.
- Support for the family. Helping at Home doesn’t replace the family. It makes it possible for them to keep being the family.
The shape of the care plan changes as the illness progresses. We expect that and we work with whoever is leading the clinical care to adjust as we go.
Who we work alongside
Care at home in the last months of life is almost always a team effort. We are one part of it. The others are usually:
- The person’s GP, who oversees medical care and prescribing.
- Community nursing team or district nurses, who manage clinical interventions, syringe drivers, pressure care assessments and end-of-life symptom management.
- A specialist palliative care team or hospice (where one is involved). Locally that’s often Beaumond House in Newark, St Barnabas in Lincolnshire, or another hospice depending on referral pathway.
- A specialist nurse where the person has a specific condition (Macmillan, Marie Curie, a condition-specific specialist nurse).
- Family carers and friends, who often do most of the daily care alongside us.
- A hospital palliative care team if the person has been an inpatient.
Our role is to deliver the planned home care visits, observe and report changes, and be part of the wider team. Anything clinical that sits with the community nursing team stays with the community nursing team.
NHS Continuing Healthcare Fast Track
If your family member’s condition is rapidly deteriorating and may be entering its final phase, they may be eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare. This is the Fast Track route. It bypasses the longer CHC assessment process and triggers urgent NHS funding, so care can start without delay.
A clinician completes the Fast Track tool, usually a community nurse, hospital specialist or GP, and it is designed to deliver a decision within a few days. When a Fast Track package comes to Helping at Home, we work with the commissioning team to get the rota in place quickly. The first visit is usually within 24 to 72 hours of commissioning, depending on the package size and the carers needed.
More on how Fast Track and standard CHC work is on our NHS Continuing Healthcare page.
Where home care alone is not enough
We are honest with families. Not every situation works at home, and things can change. Sometimes there comes a point where more clinical input is needed than home care, family and community nursing can safely provide between them. At that point a hospice inpatient unit, a community hospital, or hospital admission may be the right next step.
If we believe a situation is reaching that point, we say so. Often the community team will already have raised it. The decision sits with the family and the clinical team, not with us. Our job is to be honest about what we can safely deliver.
Familiar carers in the last weeks and days
Continuity matters at every point in care, and especially here. Where it’s possible, we plan an end-of-life package so the same small team of named carers covers the visits. Many families tell us afterwards that the same faces mattered most. Those carers knew their family member as a person rather than a case.
Where the package needs overnight cover, our overnight team handles those visits. A sleeping night suits someone who needs a carer in the home but rarely needs active intervention, while a waking night is for someone who needs regular repositioning, symptom management, or active support through the night. The overnight care page explains both in detail.
If a regular carer is on leave, cover comes from another carer in our directly employed team who has been briefed properly on the care plan. We never use agency carers.
Bereavement and after-care
When someone we’ve been caring for dies, our visits don’t end with the death. We carry on for an agreed handover period, which helps the family with the practical things that come immediately afterwards, where it’s useful. Some families want a final visit to say thank you and goodbye to the carers who knew the person, while others prefer space. Either is right.
If the care has been long and intense, our carers can also feel the loss. We have support in place for our team. This isn’t only a kindness to staff. It helps continuity for the next family.
What to do next
If you’re thinking about end-of-life care at home, call 01636 646915. The conversation is free and we’ll listen to what’s happening before saying anything about what we provide. If you’re already working with a community nursing team or hospice, we can talk to them directly with your consent.
If your family member is being assessed for Fast Track CHC, ask the clinician or discharge team to mention Helping at Home as a possible provider. We’ll respond to commissioning enquiries the same day where we can.
We provide palliative care in Newark, Grantham, Bingham, Retford, Ollerton and Southwell and the surrounding villages.
