Keeping Safe
If you employ somebody to help care for you or provide you with support, it’s important that you are able to trust them.
You need to know that those around you will not:
- abuse you in any way
- steal from you
- deliberately fail to carry out their duty to care for you
- discriminate against you.
If you are going to employ family members, friends or people who have been recommended to you here is some important advice.
1. We recommend that you interview any potential carers. For safety reasons, if you can, we would also suggest that this is done in a separate location away from your home with somebody there to assist you.
2. When you have decided who you would like to employ, ask for two references including one from the carers most recent employer. Make contact with these people to find out what they have to say.
3. If you are happy with these references, you should arrange to have a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check done on your potential employee. This check will identify if someone has been barred from working with vulnerable adults or children. (If you have children under the age of 16 living with you then we will insist that a DBS check is done on any potential carers.) To find out more on DBS checks please contact us or your Direct Payments support advisor.
4. Always ask if agency carers have been checked with the DBS.
5. It is also possible to find out more on how an agency performed in their inspections by visiting the official website of the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Their website address is www.cqc.org.uk or you can telephone them, their phone number is 03000 616161.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of your staff member’s conduct or behaviour you can talk about this with us or your Direct Payments support advisor.
You have the right to question anything that you are not happy with.
We can help to arrange a meeting with your staff member, but if you don’t feel able to discuss your concerns with the person in question, we can do this for you.
If you still don’t feel confident that things have improved, we can let you know about any disciplinary procedures you can use. In some cases this can lead to dismissal of a staff member.
Alternatively if you are unhappy with a member of staff from an agency we can help you to explain the problem to the agency manager and if necessary arrange for a new member of staff to support you. You can also change to a different agency.