Care Helpline: We’ve ‘all had cries after certain phone calls’

Free care helpline

Last year, carehome.co.uk, the UK’s largest care home reviews site, set up a free helpline to help care seekers in their search for a care home.

Over 16m people visit carehome.co.uk every year to look for a care home where they can find detailed information, photos and reviews of every registered home in the UK.

However for some people who are time-poor or feel they need a bit more support, the Care Helpline is ideal as the team can trawl through thousands of care homes and draw up a shortlist of homes suitable for a person’s needs, interests, location and budget.

Emotional and rewarding

After working on the Care Helpline for over a year, manager Megan Kaveney and team leader Paulina Frisby, have revealed the emotional challenges that come with the job as well as how rewarding it can be.

“We get some very emotional calls sometimes which is totally understanding. It is a very, very difficult point in someone’s lives when either they have to look for care for themselves or for someone they love, especially a parent or a sibling,” said Megan.

Sometimes the calls have been so emotional they have had the care helpline staff in tears, with Megan saying: “It can be really, really challenging to not take the burden on yourself. I know myself and my colleagues have all had cries after certain phone calls and that can be difficult to manage but it is only because we care so much that we feel that way.”

‘It is a minefield’ for care seekers

Looking for a care home is “such a difficult journey” and “it is fraught with so many different pitfalls that you wouldn’t expect”, she says.

Paulina attributes the challenges of looking for a care home to the complexity of the situation where the care seeker tends to have no knowledge of the care sector and is often being forced to make a decision quickly. This is coupled with the fact they are usually emotionally involved due to it being a family member or friend.

She says: “I think it is a minefield out there for care seekers and they don’t genuinely know where to start.

“One of the biggest challenges is that they are put in an emotional position and they don’t know whether they should look at funding first or if they should approach the home first or where they should get that information.”

However there is also a hugely rewarding side to working on the Care Helpline.

Care Help team guides them from start to finish

They often have callers who are desperate and don’t know where to turn and members of the Care Helpline will help guide them from the start of their journey looking for a care home to the end when their family member moves in.

“We do our follow up calls and we find out the information we gave them did help them. They have managed to find somewhere for their loved one. They have moved in and they have settled. That stress and that weight has gone.

“That is hugely rewarding to know we were a small part of that and that massive life change has really improved not just the care seeker’s life but their loved one’s life as well,” says Megan.

Working on the Care Helpline is very ‘meaningful’

It is a very “meaningful” job working on the Care Helpline as “we see that whole journey do the full circle and we get some really good responses from the people we help out,” says Paulina.

You can watch Paulina and Megan talking about what it is like working on the Care Helpline on this video.

Call our free care helpline

You can search for a care home on carehome.co.uk or if you are need some guidance on which care home would be best or just some information on how to fund your care you can ring our Care Helpline on 01488 501103 (standard call charges apply).