The Essential Care Documents, Policies and Procedures you need

When you are setting up as a self-employed paid carer, you need to ensure that you have certain documents, policies and procedures in place before you start working with clients.[Ads]This is so that you can offer a safe and accountable service, as well as offering both protection and reassurance to your clients. The right paperwork ensures you have all the records you need to hand, and you can easily monitor your clients’ progress and make changes to the care you provide. More importantly, many of these documents and policies are critical if you wish to offer your services to clients who receive Local Authority funding or you wish to become a YtB Accredited Paid Carer.We have created a bundle of documents for self-employed paid carers, which gives you everything you need to get started in one handy bundle. Many of these documents are also available separately in our shop, and they are all available as to download free to Premium Subscribers.Here are the key documents, policies procedures you should consider.

Contract

A contract is absolutely essential for a self-employed paid carer. It outlines everything that is agreed between you and your client, including what services you are going to provide to them (and what you are not), the terms of your self-employment, payment and hours, and so on.

Risk Assessment

An important part of your role as a self-employed paid carer is to be able to identify, assess and manage any risk in your role, both to protect yourself and your client. However, you also need to be able to weigh up the benefits of any situation where there could be an element of risk, as certain activities may have a greater positive outcome than the potential for something going wrong. Keeping a detailed risk assessment record is your way of ensuring that you have clearly thought about situations and to note changes that may increase the level of risk.

Safeguarding

Part of your responsibility as a self-employed paid carer is to understand safeguarding and your duty of care towards the people who you work with. You should have a detailed Safeguarding policy in place, which outlines your responsibilities and how you will handle situations where you have concerns about a person’s safety. You should also keep a record of the relevant department in your Local Authority so you know who to contact.

Complaints

You may never receive a complaint against your service, but it is wise to have a clear policy in place that you can give your clients to explain the procedure that they can follow to lodge a complaint. Making this clear from the outset helps the client feel that they can trust in you and your services, but also feel comfortable that they can address a situation should it arise. Remember that complaints can be positive, you can take the issue and use it to improve your service to everyone.

Other documents and policies

As well as the key items we have mentioned above, there are other documents and policies that help you to run a successful, safe and effective business as a self-employed paid carer. This includes knowing what records to keep and how, what support planning involves and your role in that, keeping timesheets and invoicing clients, marketing your services to build your business and more. All of this is available in The Complete Self-Employed Paid Carer Bundle, which is the most cost-effective way to get everything you need for your business, or individually in the shop.