If a provider offers to let the family see your parent's visit schedule, has your parent been asked? What follows is information, not medical advice.
What a visit schedule is for
Guidance for health and social care staff in Ireland, from HIQA and Safeguarding Ireland, says a person using a service has a right to information about their own care and about who provides it, in a form they can follow, and that it is for them to choose how much of it to have, if any.
A visit schedule is information about your parent's own care, so it starts with them.
Messages looks at that same right.
A family that asks your parent, or rings the provider, has every visit time it needs.
Your parent decides who sees it
Under the same guidance for staff in Ireland, from HIQA and Safeguarding Ireland, what a person's family is told by staff is shaped by that person's wishes.
What a care provider's family updates can show you, and what they can't sets your parent's say beside what written updates are, and what they are not.
Questions to ask a provider
These are questions for you and your parent to put to the provider together, about any schedule it offers to share:
- Who would be able to open it, and who decides who that is?
- What would it show, and what would it leave out?
- How would your parent stop it being shared, or change who has it?
Families do not sign up to WeHomeCare themselves; care providers use it.
We think what a care provider tells a family should be for the person receiving care to agree to, wherever they can.
The guidance cited here is from Ireland and speaks for Ireland. What a provider may share with a family, and with whose agreement, differs by where your parent lives.
For families
How WeHomeCare is set up differs from one care provider to another, so it is worth asking a provider which parts it uses.
WeHomeCare can be set up so care providers share a read-only view of a person's visit schedule with their family.
What it is not
Visit updates and messages from a care provider are not a way to reach urgent help.
Visit updates and messages are not health advice, and questions about a parent's health are worth bringing to their doctor or care team.