How to arrange home care while working in the UK

Key Takeaways

Arranging home care while working means covering a named slot, then sending the unpaid leave email so you can sit in on the council assessment and meet a carer. Visiting hours hold the weekday mornings. The job keeps the rest of the week.

The Department of Health and Social Care published the latest Survey of Adult Carers in England on 24 September 2026. Among unpaid carers known to councils, 19.5% were not in paid work because of caring.

The assessment is at 11.20

Merton offered Helen a care needs assessment for her dad at 11.20 on a Tuesday. She is 47. Legal secretary, Wimbledon office. Dad is 82, Raynes Park, a 14-minute walk. The 11.00 stand-up does not move.

She needed someone else in the bathroom at 7.45. The unpaid days bought the introductions. They were never going to cover every morning.

What arranging home care while working actually looks like

You are covering a named slot. The 7.45 shower. Or the lunchtime tablets.

The NHS still puts help at home from a paid carer at about £15 to £30 an hour. Ten weekday hours at £28 is about £14,560 a year. Hourly rates in 2026 wander by borough.

A later start, or dropping to four days, is a flexible working request. Visiting hours for the 7.45 shower usually cost less than going to 0.8. The Care Act 2014 still starts with a care needs assessment from the council where your parent lives. Ask for a carer's assessment for yourself on the same call.

If they are over State Pension age, start Attendance Allowance in parallel. It will not replace a salary. It can pay for some of the visiting hours.

Use the unpaid week as a logistics week

GOV.UK gives employees in England, Scotland and Wales up to one week of unpaid carer's leave in any 12 months, from day one, to give or arrange care. Old age counts. A parent counts. Northern Ireland is a different set of rules.

A week means your usual week. Three days a week, three days of leave. You can take half days. Acas is the version HR will open.

For one day, give at least three days' notice. For two days, four. For a full five-day week, ten. The request does not have to be in writing. They cannot ask for evidence of the care need. They cannot refuse it. They can postpone it if your absence would seriously disrupt the organisation, and they have to offer another date within a month.

Do not spend the week being the 7.30 rota. Use it to set the rota up.

If the conversation itself is the hard part, talking to your employer about caring is the disclosure version. This page is the diary.

A week that actually places someone

Helen took Wednesday to Friday. Notice went in the previous Monday, four lines to HR: carer's leave, arranging care for a dependant, those three days. She did not write dad.

Wednesday: Merton assessment at 11.20. She asked for a carer's assessment for herself at the same time. They talked through wash, breakfast, the tablets already prescribed. Direct payments came up.

Thursday: two introductions. One video at lunch. One in the flat at 4pm, after she left at 3. Same person both times, 7.45 to 9.15, Monday to Friday.

Friday: she stayed for the first visit. Watched where the key safe is. Wrote the chemist number on a card on the fridge.

The job had the next Monday. The shower had a name.

Tom is 52. Warehouse supervisor, Nottingham. Mum is 79, Beeston, two buses. He cannot take three full days. He booked two half-days: Tuesday afternoon for the assessment, Thursday afternoon for the introduction. Same 7.45 to 9.15 pattern. He still does Sundays.

Why arranging home care while working so often waits

The Survey of Adult Carers in England for 2025 to 2026 landed on 24 September 2026. It covers unpaid carers already known to English councils, people already on adult social care's books, rather than every working carer in the country.

60.1% were retired. 9.0% were employed full-time. 10.1% were employed part-time. 19.5%, about 60,780 people, were not in paid employment because of their caring. Only 12.0% were in paid work and felt supported by their employer. 3.5% were employed and did not.

DWP's March 2025 analysis estimated around 544,000 working-age unpaid carers were out of work because caring stopped them working, at £37 billion of lost output in 2022.

CIPD's 2025 flexible and hybrid working survey found 52% of organisations had a policy or procedure for carer's leave. Since the Act came in, only 15% had seen more requests. Unpaid time off that people cannot afford does not show up as a spike on an HR dashboard.

I do not know whether Helen's three unpaid days were possible for someone whose rent is already late. The law does not pay those days. Some employers do. Check the handbook before you assume a full week's wages vanish. If they offer three paid days, you can still take the rest of the statutory week unpaid.

If the money is already looking ugly, the cost of quitting work to care is the version with the calculator.

Call the council where they live this week and ask for a care needs assessment. Give dates that already fit the notice rules. Send the leave email the same day.

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How Match with Care can help

The first Monday is quieter if the 7.45 slot already has a name on it.

Match with Care is a managed introductory care marketplace. We interview carers, check enhanced DBS, right to work, and references, then show you profiles so your parent can meet someone before they have a key. We are not a traditional domiciliary care agency, and we are not CQC-registered as a care provider. Introductory matching does not work that way.

What we can do is keep the first ask small: weekday mornings, or two lunchtime visits, often around 20 to 30 per cent below typical agency quotes, with a care advisor if the match is wrong. Hours go in the app. You get a weekly invoice. You send the four-line email with a rota behind it.

If you want to talk through the slot without putting your parent or your manager on the line, call +44 7962 657635 or email hello@matchwithcare.com.