Guide – Personal Care

What is personal care?

Personal care is a term used to provide help and support with daily tasks such as washing, dressing and bathing. Fitting within your or your loved one’s regular routines we provide at home support with daily personal care tasks such as showering, dressing, applying creams and make-up, and shaving.

Our professional fully trained carers can visit you or your friend or relative at home, with a schedule that’s been agreed in advanced. This can be at regular intervals during the day (we call this PatchCare®) or we can provide live-in care for those who would benefit from someone to be around more often.

Personal care can also be a part of our respite care or home from hospital service that helps rehabilitate someone after a stay in hospital.

We carry out every task with dignity and respect

With Caremark you or your loved one can rely on seeing the same familiar faces at pre-arranged times. Personal care tasks we can assist with include the following:

Getting up, washing, showering or bathing and/or preparation for bed

• Getting up from or into bed and getting dressed or undressed
• Using the bathroom and toilet using a commode or bed pan
• Bathing and showering, including bed-baths 

Help with grooming

• Cleaning teeth
• Shaving and support with shaving
• Hair washing, drying, and combing
• Personal hygiene management
• Choosing and looking after clothes
• Applying lotions, ointments and creams as required
• Applying make-up and hair care

Assistance in bed

• Support moving position in bed, to stretch and prevent bed sores
• Changing and washing bed linen

Our personal care services can be tailored to your or your family member’s needs and preferences and they can change as circumstances change. When we work with you or your family, we’ll continually review our services and adjust in collaboration with everyone involved to ensure the very best levels of care.

To read more about our personal care service, visit our section on Personal Care.

We offer a holistic service that’s specifically tailored to you or your loved one

Personal care lets you or your loved one live your life the way you/they want to as it’s built completely around the individual's needs. In addition to personal care, our care assistants can also provide many other services, including administering medication, help with mobility, companionship care, dementia care, and respite services for carers themselves. We cover these core services in more detail below:

Live-in care

If you require ongoing daily and nighttime support, but also want to live as independently as possible and avoid going into a residential home, it may be best to have a live-in care assistant. Live-in care enables you or your loved one to receive tailored, professional support 24-hours-a-day, at home. Click to read more about our live-in care service.

PatchCare® services

Our revolutionary responsive PatchCare® service is designed to combat loneliness with more regular, tailored visits throughout the day. Whatever you or your loved one needs help with – from getting dressed and going to the toilet to administering medication and preparing a favourite meal – our PatchCare® assistants will get to know you or your family member or friend's preferences. Click to read more about our unique PatchCare® service.

Dementia care

Those living with dementia often need extra support with their personal care. It can be a difficult subject to broach and the person living with dementia may feel shame, anxiety or confusion over who the people caring for them are and why such help is needed. Our care assistants are fully trained to help understand and handle such instances and can offer encouragement, support or perhaps a little extra space in response to the person’s needs at the time. Our care assistants work hard to gain trust and build a relationship with their clients, helping to promote as much independence as possible.

If you or your family are finding it hard to support a loved one living with dementia, we can offer advice and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to get in contact by clicking to find the contact details for your local office. You can find out more about caring for someone living with dementia by clicking here.  

Respite care

Our respite care service is designed to give carers a break away from their day-to-day care duties, so they can recharge and revive. Our kind and highly qualified carers can visit your loved one’s home to take over the caring you do, giving you time out whenever you need it. Click to read more about our respite care service.

Companionship care

Companionship care provides companionship and friendship at a time when it is most needed, aiming to reduce or prevent loneliness in a person who might otherwise become isolated. Read more about our companionship care here.

Home from hospital

We can provide personal care along with other practical support for you or your loved one after a hospital stay. Our service helps with rehabilitation, can prevent hospital readmission and is often a much-preferred alternative to residential care, allowing you or your family member to remain in the comfort and familiar surroundings of home. Usually delivered over a period of a few weeks, Caremark can help with transport home from hospital, help regaining confidence and independence, and provide assistance with settling back into routines.

A member of our friendly team will be happy to give you further details about Caremark’s personal care services and how we can help you or your loved one. Please click here to find the contact details for your local office.

To read more about our personal care service, visit our section on Personal Care.

How personal care can help you and your family

There are plenty of ways in which personal care can help you and your family. Here we highlight a few:

Enabling you or your loved one to stay at home

With Caremark’s care assistants supporting you or your loved one, staying at home for longer will be much easier (as opposed to being forced to move into residential care). This has enormous benefits in terms of wellbeing and can also be a cost-effective alternative to a care home.

Easing the burden of caring

Employing the services of a care assistant can reduce the strain on family members and friends who might have been taking it in turns to shoulder the responsibility of caring. With a carer in place for your loved one or friend, you’ll be able to focus on your relationship and do things you like together, or just enjoy each other's company, rather than carrying out tasks.

A carer you can trust

Our care assistants are experienced in helping all kinds of people with their personal care needs and appreciate the importance of respecting their client’s dignity. They are considerate, understanding and sympathetic and have been trained to help their clients retain as much independence as possible. This means everyone involved can relax knowing that the highest quality of support is always being given.

Our care assistants are thoroughly vetted according to strict requirements and undergo regular comprehensive training courses to ensure they are fully equipped to support you or your loved one at home.


 Peace of mind

To ensure the highest standard of care and give you the ultimate peace of mind, our services in England are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In Wales our services are regulated by the Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), in Northern Ireland by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) and in Scotland by The Care Inspectorate.

Respectful of your or your loved one’s dignity

Illness, age or infirmity can make it difficult to carry out all the personal care tasks that you or your friend or relative once handled with ease and we understand that this can be frustrating or embarrassing. Our qualified care assistants are experienced in helping all kinds of people with their personal care.

A care plan that considers likes and dislikes

Our care assistants know that everyone is an individual, with unique personal needs, preferences and values. Our support arrangements will be personalised to you or your family member’s own requirements. While this can of course include members of the family, we will only provide the services that you or your loved one have specifically asked for in the agreed care and support plan. Likes and dislikes, hygiene or beauty products, and specific instructions for tasks will all be outlined in the care plan.

We encourage independence

There may be some things you or your loved one would prefer to do independently. Our care assistants will always provide space when it is wanted and encourage independence wherever they can.

To read more about our personal care service, visit our Personal Care page.

Would you like further information about our personal care service?

If you would like more details about our personal care service, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by filling out the form below. Your local Caremark team will be in touch to discuss your needs and guide you through your options. If it suits you best we will be happy to arrange an appointment in the comfort of your own home.