The phone call comes at a time you least expect it. A nurse, usually kind but always busy, tells you that your parent is medically ready and the hospital would like to discharge them in forty-eight hours. You ask if there is any support being arranged. There is a pause. They mention a discharge team, or a social worker, or possibly an assessment next week. None of it adds up to someone being at the front door on Thursday morning when your parent arrives home alone. And you are standing there, heart going, completely unsure which direction to turn in first.

This happens to families every single week in this country. It is not a failure on your part that you do not already have care in place. Most people do not arrange home care until the moment it becomes urgent, because most people have never had to do it before. The panic you feel right now is completely reasonable. What we want to do is give you something to actually do with it.

Your first call is to the ward, not to a care agency

Before you do anything else, go back to the ward and ask specifically to speak to the hospital discharge coordinator or the ward social worker. Every NHS hospital in England is required under the Care Act 2014 to carry out a needs assessment before someone with care needs is sent home. If that has not happened yet, it should. Ask directly: has a discharge assessment been done? If not, request one in writing. You can do this by email to the ward manager if you cannot get through on the phone.

If your parent is being sent home with no care package because the council has not yet done an assessment, that assessment can still happen after discharge. Your local council's adult social care team handles this. You can find the number on your borough's website or by calling Citizens Advice. The assessment is free. If your parent qualifies for funded care, it may cover some or all of the cost. It is worth starting this process even if you end up arranging private care in the meantime, because the two do not cancel each other out.

Age UK's free advice line on 0800 678 1602 is genuinely useful here. They are not selling anything. They know the discharge process, they know what questions to ask the hospital, and they can help you work out whether your parent has grounds for a more supported discharge package.

While that is happening, think about what the first week actually needs to look like

This is not the moment to design a perfect long-term care arrangement. This is the moment to cover the first seven to ten days while everything else catches up. Ask yourself: what does your parent actually need at eight in the morning and six in the evening? Probably help getting up, washed, and dressed. Probably a meal sorted. Possibly medication prompting. Possibly just someone to be there so they are not alone and frightened in a house they have not been in for two weeks.

A single, consistent carer who comes in twice a day for that first week is more valuable than a complicated rota of strangers. Continuity matters enormously after a hospital stay. Your parent will be tired, possibly confused, and almost certainly anxious. Meeting three different people in the first five days is exhausting for everyone. If you have any say in how care is arranged, push for one person.

If you are arranging care privately and you are in London, the Carers UK Helpline on 0808 808 7777 can help you understand your options and think through costs. Direct payments via the council are another route if an assessment moves quickly, and Citizens Advice can explain how that works in practice.

What if the hospital is pressing you and nothing is in place yet?

Hospitals can and do discharge people before a care package is fully arranged, but they are not supposed to discharge someone into an unsafe situation. If you believe your parent is not safe to go home without care and no care has been arranged, you can say so to the discharge coordinator and ask for it to be recorded. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman at lgo.org.uk handles complaints about adult social care and discharge planning where things have gone wrong. Knowing this exists is useful. You do not need to threaten anyone with it; simply knowing your rights changes the conversation.

What families in this situation often tell us they wish they had known is that asking for more time, or for more support, is not being difficult. It is you doing your job.

One option if you want help finding a vetted carer quickly

We at Hibant are a London introductory care agency. When families contact us in a discharge situation, we look across our roster for a carer whose experience fits what the first week actually needs. We cannot promise to always move overnight, but we move as fast as we can, and the carers we introduce have all been DBS-checked and insurance-verified before any introduction happens. It is one route among the ones we have described above.

If you would rather not spend the next forty-eight hours on hold or scrolling through unverified listings, we are worth a conversation. We are a London introductory care agency, and every carer we work with has been independently DBS-checked and insurance-verified before being introduced to a family. You meet the carer yourself before any arrangement begins, and you choose who comes through your parent's door. For families navigating an urgent discharge, we can often move within a day or two. Email us at hello@hibantcare.com or take a look at hibantcare.com.

Tonight, the one thing: call the ward and ask whether a discharge assessment has been done. If it has not, request one and ask for the discharge coordinator's name. That single step protects your parent and buys you a little time. Everything else can follow from there.

Hibant

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