Alcester Home Care

I have worked for Alcester Home Care for two and a half years. I worked in a care home previously but found the work stress to be too much. Moving to Alcester Home Care has proven to be the change I needed! I love my job and the clients we support. The management team are amazing and have supported me to progress within the company. I am made to feel like a valued member of the team. The carers all go above and beyond what is expected of them and I think this is reflected in the high standards of care we provide. I can't recommend them highly enough, as an employer or as a care provider!

I highly recommend Alcester Home Care. They looked after my mum for 3 years from January 2020. Throughout the pandemic mum remained fit and well, and the carers took on the tasks which I normally did when I couldn't visit because of Covid restrictions. All the carers were bright and cheerful, raising mum's spirits by their visits. Thoroughly professional and skilled in their caring roles. Fantastic!

I can strongly recommend Alcester Home Care. The manager Liz and her team have been looking after my mother for 18 months now. Everyone in the team is excellent. My mother has advanced dementia, her health is deteriorating gradually and she is now bed bound following a stroke. Throughout this period of change, the team has provided wonderful, comprehensive care to her and kindness and support to us as her family. The team shows great professionalism, dedication and understanding. The schedule of visits takes account of Mum’s care needs and daily routine, there are robust safety checks in place to ensure that carers are supported in their handling of medicines and equipment, and liaison with the NHS Continuing Healthcare Funding team has been very well managed. The home carers are well trained, confident and highly skilled. They show great sensitivity to daily changes in Mum’s condition, look after her extremely well and their visits brighten Mum’s day. They draw on their knowledge and experience to alert me to any health concerns that may arise so I can follow these up promptly with the doctor or district nurses. Alcester Home Care’s commitment to high quality care makes a significant, very positive impact on Mum’s quality of life and brings great reassurance to us as her family.

We recommend Alcester Home Care wholeheartedly. We have been so pleased with the help the carers have given us. It was something we were dreading but they have made the whole process as pleasant as possible. Also we have needed to keep changing the package and this has been organised very quickly and efficiently.

Extremely helpful and very professional service in difficult times, would recommend them in all aspects of their care package

First class nursing and home care agency.Alcester Home Care provided the most excellent care to my mother over the last two years. The care workers were so knowledgeable and caring that we knew mom was getting the best care available. Also being a doctor and nurse driven organisation, the medical advice given was excellent and gave us great peace of mind. Last but not least I was impressed when we needed changes to the service, how flexible and supportive they were.Would fully recommend this organisation.

Alcester Home Care offer a first class care service. They go above and beyond what is expected and compared to the larger companies, they deliver a bespoke, person centred service. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend!

Badly organised, poor communication, staff leave unhappy - management tendency to become prickly when fielding client complaints. Was very disappointed that, for a company which claims to be different and charges so much, they proved to be no better; if anything, worse in terms of organisation and client relations than others who charge less. Bottom line we left them because they were hard to deal with, had become too unreliable and, in that respect, poor value for money.Alcester Home Care came to us claiming they started up as a response to bad care being offered by other agencies servicing the Alcester community. They spoke at length about how (and made many promises that) they would do things differently. Sadly, however, from that beginning in January of this year, and despite the efforts of their first main carer (who was fantastic), practically from the off the company revealed itself to be badly run with basic, enduring logistical weak-spots. Good staff soon left, citing bad organisation and office friction. Communication with clients proved to be virtually non-existent; call times shifted around without prior conversation; carers were left to pass important messages on from management and to apologise on their behalf; unforgivably, my mother was left without care on various occassions; staff weren't being provided with rotas, so problems and unhappiness inevitably occured; likewise, staff spoke of being given just 15 minutes to get from Redditch to Alcester between calls - and inexperienced newcomers were (by the company's own admission) being put into roles beyond their professional abilities because of staff shortages. In short, exactly the same problems as (sadly) too many other agencies.What made it worse, however, was that Alcester Home Care were doing all of this while charging higher, almost premium fees. The agency charges £20 an hour yet only pays its carers minimum wage; to which, no training seemed to be given to new employees starting without prior professional care experience. Attempts to raise concerns resulted in management becoming - in my experience - spiteful and, sometimes, petty. Managers were difficult to get hold of; voicemail messages would go unanswered for a day or two until further effort was made to contact the agency; even then, we were given no understanding of who to contact out-of-hours.Overall, I found them to be concerningly disorganised and at times infuriatingly unprofessional. What was particularly hard to tolerate was the agency's tendency at times to find a way to blame the client. And so, in the end, and after one final - bizarre - admin mistake which left my mother without care, we decided enough was enough. By this point we'd become so ground down by poor management, dreadful communication, ill-suited staff and, ultimately, the combative attitude of one particular manager, that we gave up. In my honest opinion, and based entirely on experience of hiring Alcester Home Care, they are badly run; none of the four directors have ever run (or even worked at) a care agency before and, on experience, I have to admit it shows. The real shame being that they didn't seem to want to change even after problems were flagged; personalities seemed to get in the way of hearing where they could improve - and, ultimately, the simple fact is they lost our custom because we stopped being able to rely on them.

Excellent home care company with flexible options. All the staff I've met are caring, helpful and professional. Would absolutely recommend to others needing care at home.

Fantastic service all round. From the moment i rang alcester health care i recieved a completely professional and efficient service. All carers seem trained to a very high level and go the extra mile. Certainly a service that is second to none!