Home care in Birmingham

Birmingham is where Nationwide Care Services started, and the branch still runs the densest set of rounds we have. Carers are matched to a patch rather than a postcode list, so the person who comes on a Tuesday knows the door code, the dog and which neighbour holds the spare key.

The catchment covers east and south Birmingham — Yardley, Acocks Green, Hall Green, Small Heath, Sparkhill, Moseley and Kings Heath — and takes in both Heartlands Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth. Packages that start on a hospital discharge are common here, and the branch is set up to begin at short notice rather than at the start of the following week.

Because this is also the head office, the 24-hour on-call line is answered from this building. Ringing at three in the morning gets a care professional with access to the live rota, not an answering service taking a message for the morning.