A typical day in the life of a visiting care manager, as written by Marisa. Marisa started off as a visiting carer with Kemble in 2015, and after two years ended up becoming an on-call manager where she was a point of contact for the out of hours. She then became a trainer and trained all the new carers in induction. Marisa then helped in the office, after a short while she became a Live-in Care manager for a number of years, before switching to be a Visiting Care Manager.
I arrive at the office just before 08.30am, as the office opens then. First thing I do, is check if there has been a handover from On-call and any emergency's that need looking into, or any handbacks and sickness. If there is, this takes priority, so I will start looking at covering calls straight away and keeping clients informed of how we are getting on. If there are no handbacks, then I will catch up on my e-mails and any WhatsApp messages I may have received while the office has been closed, and action anything that needs doing.
Every day is different, so some days I have client reviews booked, so this means I would be out of the office visiting my clients to see how their support is going and if we need to make any tweaks to their support or their Support Plan. I may have new client assessments booked, so I may also be out some days doing those too. A typical assessment usually lasts a couple of hours. When I get back to the office, I will set up the new client. This involves writing their Support Plan and adding them onto the system, allocating them carers, creating a WhatsApp group and making sure their support package is ready to start on the agreed date, this is usually within 48 hours, but we’ve done it in a few hours before when urgently needed.
We regularly hold carer PA meetings, which involves teams of carers coming to the office so we can discuss their client’s needs and best practice. Once they are completed, I then action anything that needs doing at my desk. Sometimes, I have carer supervisions booked in, so again those would be meetings in the office or over the phone.
Sometimes I have family meetings which I would usually go to the client’s property and have a meeting with the client and their family to discuss any concerns or information needed, these are separate from a client review and are often booked because the support required has changed before are view is due and so an earlier meeting is booked. Depending on what situations arise, I may have to put in urgent referrals for clients for support such as Occupational Therapy, I will then feedback to the carers and clients with what has been done, so they know I have actioned the request, and that they should hear from the relevant people soon.
The phones can get very busy at times, so I write everything down on a note pad as I receive information, and then work through it throughout the day, ensuring it’s completed by the time the office is due to close. I may have to update documents such as care plans, add medication, answer medication queries, or write up moving and handling assessments.
Once a week, usually on a Monday, I audit the MAR charts and make sure there are no errors, if there is, it is my responsibility to find out what has happened through discussions with the carers and then write a conclusion why and any lessons learnt to try and avoid them happening again.
I will liaise with GPs, hospitals, District nurses, OTs,discharge teams on a daily basis regarding clients and new starters.
If it’s a quieter day, I may help the team co-ordinator with rotas and unallocated visit. I also have to check that we are up to date with carer and client reviews, PA meetings, and that sickness/return to work forms are completed.
Typically, I try to work on my NVQ Level 5 one day a week, although this can be difficult finding the time when we are busy! Once a month I also attend a workshop for my level 5.
We then aim to finish for 5pm. Some days we need to stay later, depending on if we have all our work completed. At the end of each day, we also ring clients with any changes to their rotas or update the WhatsApp groups so carers can update the client’s rota.
