Home Care in Bexley: Visiting Carers from Sidcup to Erith

Is Bexley close enough to Lewisham for visiting care?

For most of the borough, yes. Bexley has no Tube or Overground, but trains on the Bexleyheath line and the Sidcup line both call at Lewisham, so Welling, Bexleyheath and Sidcup are roughly 15 to 30 minutes from our office by train, and around 20 to 30 minutes by car along the A2 or A20. Blackfen sits between Welling and Sidcup, and Barnehurst is one stop past Bexleyheath.

The north-east of the borough is a longer trip. Erith, Belvedere and Slade Green are on the North Kent line, closer to 35 to 45 minutes from Lewisham, and Crayford is further out along the Sidcup line, towards Dartford. We cover all of these, but early-morning and late-evening visits out there are harder to staff, so we will be straight with you about what we can reliably do before anything is agreed. Where daily visits are not workable, a live-in carer removes the travel question altogether.

Parking is easier than in inner London. Most residential streets in Bexley are free to park on, with controlled zones mainly around stations and town centres such as the Broadway, Welling, Sidcup, Crayford and Erith. The council also runs a social care permit scheme that care organisations can apply for, letting staff on duty park in resident and pay bays.

What a home care visit covers

A visit is planned around the parts of the day that have become difficult. That might be:

• Personal care: getting washed and dressed, help in the bathroom, continence care, shaving and hair
• Medication support: prompting from a dosette box, assisting, and recording what was taken
• Meals and drinks, and checking the fridge is not full of things past their date
• Home help: laundry, changing the bed, light cleaning, keeping floors clear
• Companionship, a walk to the Broadway or round Danson Park, or a trip to the shops in Sidcup
• A sit-in so a husband, wife or daughter can get out for a few hours

We are registered with the CQC for personal care, with specialisms including dementia, physical disabilities and sensory impairments. We were registered in October 2023 and have not yet been inspected, so we do not have a rating.

Interwar semis and the upstairs bathroom

Bexley is street after street of 1920s and 1930s semis and short terraces, most of them owner-occupied. They are good houses to grow old in, with one recurring problem: a straight, steep staircase and the only bathroom at the top of it. Once that climb becomes hard, washing and getting to bed are usually the first things to suffer.

Carers can work with what is there, but this is the point to talk about a stairlift, a commode, or bringing a bed down to the front room. A council occupational therapist can assess for equipment and adaptations, which you can ask for through the same assessment described below. Bungalows in Barnehurst and post-war flats in Erith and Slade Green bring different issues: in a tower block, the question is the lift, and what happens on the day it is out of service.

How do I get a care assessment from Bexley Council?

Bexley's Adult Social Care front door is the Single Point of Contact team on 020 8303 7777. You can also fill in an online self-assessment through the Bexley Care Hub. If the form is a struggle, any council-run library or any OneBexley charity will help you fill it in.

That last part is particular to Bexley. The council has handed some of its Care Act assessments to OneBexley, a partnership of local charities including Age UK Bexley and Carers' Support Bexley, reached through BVSC on 020 4530 6580. So the first person to visit and talk about care needs may be from a charity, not a council social worker. That is normal, and the assessment counts in the same way.

If the council decides you are eligible, a financial assessment follows, and you can take your council funding as a direct payment and use it to pay an agency like us. Our guide to paying for care in London explains the means test and NHS Continuing Healthcare. We do not quote prices before an assessment, because the hours and the type of care decide the cost.

Coming home from Woolwich or Dartford

Discharge into Bexley runs on a Home First approach, with "discharge to assess" pathways that support people at home while their longer-term needs are worked out, coordinated through Bexley Care, the joint council and NHS arrangement. If you live in Crayford or Slade Green, that may mean a Kent hospital handing over to London Borough of Bexley social care, which is worth knowing when the ward talks about "the local authority".

Whichever hospital it is, ring us while the discharge is still being planned, not on the morning someone is ready to leave. That gives us time to check whether we can cover the visits needed and from when. Our hospital discharge support page explains how it works.

What we can help with in Bexley

• Personal care, washing and dressing
• Medication prompting and support
• Meals, laundry and home help
• Companionship and getting out
• Dementia care at home
• Support after a hospital stay
• Short breaks for family carers
• Live-in care when needs grow