When a visit is late, missed or moved

It comes up a day later on the phone, somewhere between the weather and the neighbour's new fence: the carer came at a different time on Tuesday. Your parent mentions it in passing. This page is about the arrangement, a visit that did not happen as planned and how to ask about it. It does not say what a changed visit means for your parent, on purpose. This is information, not medical advice.

Start with what your parent says happened

Before you ring anyone, ask your parent how it went from their side and what, if anything, they would like done about it. Your parent's own account, on a call like that one, tells the family everything it needs to know about the visit. Go at their pace, and keep to what they want raised.

Ask the provider what happened to the visit

If a visit has not come and you are still waiting for it, ringing the provider is the first step. In England, NICE's information for the public on home care says the people who provide a person's home care should take action straight away if a care worker is late or misses a visit. That gives you and your parent a plain question to put to the provider: what happened to this visit, and what was done about it.

Asking what happened to the visit is a question about the arrangement, not a verdict on the person who came. Put it in those terms, leave the worker's reasons to the provider, and let the answer be about the schedule.

Agree how changed visits will be handled from here

NICE's quality standard on home care for older people in England describes each person's home care plan setting out how their provider will respond to missed or late visits, including how and when the person, or unpaid carers such as family, will be told. You and your parent can ask what the provider's own plan for missed visits sets out, since NICE's home care guideline for England recommends that providers have such plans in place and says they could include setting out clearly what should happen if a visit is missed.

Your parent may want to raise these with the provider, with you there if they would like: what the plan says about a late, missed or moved visit, and who hears about it, and how. Ask your parent, too, whether they want the family told at all, and if so, which of you.

Keep your parent's choices in view

Before treating a changed time as a lapse, check with your parent whether the change was theirs. Respecting their independence and choices has more on keeping their say at the centre.

Raise a pattern with the provider

If changed visits keep coming up and your parent wants it raised, take it to the provider. Independent Age, a UK charity, says it can be harder to raise a problem with care at home, especially when a person worries that their care worker could be blamed for something that is not the worker's fault, but that it is still important to raise it with the organisation arranging the care. In Ireland, guidance for health and social care staff from HIQA and Safeguarding Ireland says staff explain to people how they can make a complaint and work to reduce the fear of negative consequences from making one.

The guidance on this page comes from England, the wider UK and Ireland, and speaks for those places. What happens beyond the provider, and who oversees home care, differs by where your parent lives, so ask the provider how its own process works. What good care at home can look like looks at raising something about the care more broadly.

Take any health question to their doctor or care team

The provider is the place for questions about visit times. A question about your parent's health, whatever prompted it, is worth bringing to their doctor or care team, and how much of the story behind it gets told there is up to your parent.

If a situation cannot wait, turn to How to reach urgent help, wherever you are.