Home Care in Tooting (SW17)

Yes, we can provide home care in Tooting. Visiting care is possible here, because the Northern line gives our carers a direct run from London Bridge, but it depends on having someone free at the times you need, so ask first. Live-in care is available anywhere in SW17, and every arrangement begins with a free assessment at home.

Who arranges care when you leave St George's Hospital?

St George's, on Blackshaw Road, is the main acute hospital for the whole of Wandsworth, so for Tooting families a discharge often means coming home from just down the road. The council's advice is simple: if you are worried about managing at home, tell the named nurse or the ward's discharge co-ordinator, and they will refer you to a social worker. Wandsworth's leaving hospital guidance sets out what happens next.

Many people are first offered KITE (Keep Independent Through Enablement), the council's free short-term service that helps you regain everyday skills over a few days or weeks. When KITE finishes, or if you need more than it offers, you may have to contribute to ongoing care. Families who are paying privately can call us while the person is still on the ward, and we will arrange the assessment to fit the discharge date as best we can. Our hospital discharge care page explains what the first days usually involve.

Cottage estates and terraced streets

Tooting's housing is tightly packed. The Totterdown Fields estate was built by the London County Council in the early 1900s as cottage housing: small two-storey terraces on narrow streets. Around Tooting Bec and the roads off Upper Tooting Road, Victorian and Edwardian terraces dominate, many now divided into flats, with council and purpose-built blocks in between.

These houses are compact. Bathrooms are often upstairs and small, staircases are steep, and a hospital bed sometimes has to go in the front room. That does not rule out good care. It means the assessment looks hard at how someone gets washed, gets to the toilet at night and gets in and out of the front door. Converted flats and cottages rarely have a spare bedroom, so live-in care is less often the answer here than in the bigger houses of other neighbourhoods.

Getting around Tooting

• Tube: Tooting Broadway and Tooting Bec, both on the Northern line.
• Rail: Tooting station, on Thameslink.
• Buses to St George's: the 155, 264, 280, 493 and G1 all stop at the hospital. The 155 continues through Tooting Bec and Balham towards Clapham.
• Buses west: the 44 and 270 run from Tooting Broadway along Garratt Lane through Earlsfield to Wandsworth.

The Tooting Broadway and Wandsworth Common/Tooting Bec controlled parking zones cover most streets. Visitor permits are only valid in the zone they were issued for, so if you live near a zone boundary, check which one your street is in before a carer drives over. From our Lewisham office, Tooting is roughly 45 to 55 minutes by train and Tube.

When a Tooting house does have a spare room

Where the home does have a spare room, a live-in carer can provide round-the-clock support, with their own room and daily breaks. Short live-in stays also work as respite for a family carer. Unpaid carers in Tooting can ask Wandsworth for a carer's assessment, and Wandsworth Carers' Centre (020 8877 1200) offers advice, dementia carer support and an in-home respite service.

Council contacts, the dementia day centre and the rest of the borough are on our home care in Wandsworth page.

Services in Tooting

• Hospital discharge
• Personal care
• Medication support
• Companionship
• Dementia care
• Live-in care
• Palliative care

What we can help with in Tooting

• 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