Home Care in Harrow

We can provide visiting home care in Harrow, but whether we can staff regular daily visits at your address depends on carer availability, because our office is in Lewisham, more than an hour away. Call us and we will tell you straight. Every package starts with a free home assessment and a written care plan, and where visits are not realistic, live-in care usually is.

An hour and more on three lines: how far Harrow is from us

From Lewisham, the quickest way to central Harrow is a train to London Bridge, the Jubilee line to Baker Street and a fast Metropolitan line train to Harrow-on-the-Hill. That is roughly 60 to 70 minutes door to door, and longer to Pinner, Hatch End or Harrow Weald. Stanmore is the one place with a straight run, at the far end of the Jubilee line, and it is still over an hour.

We will not pretend that is local. Visiting care means a carer arriving at roughly the same time every day, sometimes several times a day, and that only works if the carer lives within reach. So for Harrow we look at each request on its merits, and if we cannot cover it properly, we say so at the start.

Personal care, medicines and company: what goes into a visit

A visit is built around the care plan agreed at the assessment. Typical tasks include:

• Personal care: a wash or shower, shaving, dressing, continence care and getting up or settling into bed
• Medication support, from prompting to assisting with tablets and recording what was taken
• Breakfast or a hot meal, and an eye on fluids
• Home help: laundry, changing the bed, a tidy of the kitchen
• Companionship, a walk to the shops on Station Road or a trip to an appointment
• A sit-in so a family carer can get out for a while

We are registered with the CQC for personal care, with specialisms in dementia, physical disabilities and sensory impairments; for dementia without a diagnosis yet, the GP can refer to Harrow Memory Services, run by Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. Our service is registered but has not yet been inspected, so it has no rating.

Stairs, box rooms and the hill: Harrow homes and visiting care

Most of Harrow is interwar Metroland: 1920s and 30s semis and short terraces that grew up along the Metropolitan line in North Harrow, Rayners Lane, Kenton and Pinner. The bathroom and bedrooms are upstairs, so the first conversation is often about stairs. Many of these houses have room for a stairlift, or for a bed and commode downstairs while someone recovers, and the council has an occupational therapy service that can look at equipment and adaptations.

Wealdstone has older Edwardian terraces, some split into flats with narrow stairs, while the newer blocks in the town centre and on Wealdstone's regeneration sites have lifts and level access. Harrow on the Hill is the hardest place for access: steep lanes and listed cottages where a ramp or a wider doorway may need permission.

Do carers need a parking permit in Harrow?

Only near stations and town centres. Harrow has controlled parking zones around its stations and town centres, including Harrow town centre and the streets around Harrow & Wealdstone, each with its own hours shown on the entry signs. Away from those, most suburban streets are uncontrolled, so parking is generally easier than in inner London. If you live in a CPZ, residents can buy virtual visitor permits or scratch cards for a visiting carer who drives.

How do I get a care assessment from Harrow Council?

Harrow Council's Adult Social Care assesses care needs for free, whatever a person's income or savings. First contact goes through Access Harrow: phone 020 8901 2680 (also the number for urgent support) or email ahadults@harrow.gov.uk. You can also start it yourself online through BetterCare Support, the self-assessment tool the council partners with. The council's care needs assessment page sets out each route.

If the council finds eligible needs, a financial assessment follows. You can ask for the council's share as a direct payment and use it to pay an agency such as us; HAD (Harrow Association of Disabled People) offers a local payroll and brokerage service for people managing direct payments. Our guide to paying for care explains the means test and NHS Continuing Healthcare.

Home from Northwick Park, or from the orthopaedic hospital at Stanmore

Northwick Park Hospital, on Watford Road by the Brent border and run by London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust, is Harrow's A&E and where most residents are discharged from. The council has said it will talk to patients before discharge about support at home.

The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital on Brockley Hill, Stanmore, is a national specialist centre, not an A&E. Harrow residents coming home from a hip or knee replacement or spinal surgery there often need help with washing, dressing and stairs for a few weeks. If surgery is planned, talk to us before the operation date. Our hospital discharge support page explains how we plan it.

Where we cover, from HA1 to HA8

We take enquiries from the whole borough: Harrow town centre and Harrow on the Hill (HA1 and HA2), South Harrow, Rayners Lane, West Harrow and North Harrow (HA2), Wealdstone, Harrow Weald and Kenton (HA3), Pinner and Hatch End (HA5), Stanmore and Canons Park (HA7 and HA8), and the Harrow side of HA0 around Sudbury Hill. Harrow Weald, with no station of its own, is the hardest to reach without a car.

Harrow has a large Gujarati and wider South Asian community and a long-established Jewish community around Stanmore. If a vegetarian or kosher kitchen, prayer times or a language matters, tell us at the assessment. We will try to match it, and we will tell you honestly if we cannot.

What we can help with in Harrow

• 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