The call comes and your stomach drops. They are saying Thursday. Maybe even tomorrow. Your parent is being discharged from hospital and you are standing in a corridor or a car park or your kitchen, doing the maths in your head, and the maths does not work. You do not have a carer. You have not had time to think about equipment. You have a job and possibly children and you live forty minutes away, and nobody from the ward has told you anything useful beyond a discharge date.

This is not a failure of planning on your part. Hospital discharge in this country is faster than it used to be, and the gap between "medically fit to leave" and "actually ready to be at home" is something families fall into every single day. According to Age UK, families are often given very little notice, and the system expects someone to fill the gap quickly. That someone, in most cases, is you.

So here is what you can actually do this week, in order.

Step one: ask the ward for a discharge coordinator before anything else

Every NHS hospital is supposed to have a discharge team or a liaison nurse whose job is to link the ward to community services. Ring the ward today, ask to speak to the discharge coordinator or the social worker attached to the ward, and ask these two questions directly: has a needs assessment been requested, and what reablement or intermediate care is being offered? Under the NHS England hospital discharge guidance, people leaving hospital with care needs should be assessed before they go home. You are entitled to ask this. If the answer is that nothing has been arranged, say clearly that you need a social care referral before discharge.

Step two: request a Care Act needs assessment from the council

Under the Care Act 2014, your parent has a legal right to a needs assessment from their local council if it looks like they may need care or support. This assessment is free. It decides what the council will fund or part-fund. You can request it yourself on their behalf, or the hospital discharge team can trigger it. Ring the adult social care duty line at your parent's local council today and say the words: "I am requesting a needs assessment for someone being discharged from hospital." Write down the name of the person you spoke to and the time of the call.

Step three: ask the council about reablement

Many councils offer something called reablement, which is a short block of free home care (usually up to six weeks) for people coming out of hospital, designed to help them regain independence. It is not means-tested. It is not widely advertised. You have to ask. Ask the adult social care team whether your parent is eligible, and ask whether it can start on the day of discharge or within twenty-four hours.

Step four: ring Age UK for a fifteen-minute conversation

The Age UK Advice Line (0800 678 1602) is free and genuinely useful for exactly this situation. They can help you understand what the council is obliged to offer, what questions to ask the discharge team, and what to do if the council says they cannot help in time. They have no commercial interest in what you decide. Use them.

Step five: think about what the first forty-eight hours actually need to look like

Before you go looking for a carer, write down what actually needs to happen on day one and day two at home. Getting up safely. Washing. Medication. Meals. Getting to a toilet. Moving around the house. This list does the following: it tells you how many hours of support per day you are really looking at, it tells you whether any equipment is needed (the occupational therapist at the hospital can advise and sometimes supply), and it gives any carer you speak to something concrete to work from rather than a vague sense of "needs a bit of help".

Step six: if you need to find a carer privately this week, know what good looks like

If the council cannot place a carer in time, or if you are going privately, the shape of a good arrangement is this: one consistent carer rather than a rotating rota of faces your parent will not recognise, someone whose DBS check and insurance you have independently verified, and a proper in-person meeting before any first shift. This is not a luxury. It is the minimum that makes care safe and sustainable. An introductory arrangement where you choose the carer yourself and pay them directly means continuity and a direct relationship, which matters enormously in those first fragile days at home.

We at Hibant have spoken to many families who found themselves exactly here, and what they tell us they wish they had known is that the first step is almost never "find a carer" on its own. It is "understand what the system owes you first, then fill the gap the system leaves".

If you would rather not navigate this alone in the next forty-eight hours, we can help. We are a London introductory care agency. Every carer we work with has been DBS-checked, insurance-verified, and reference-checked before we introduce them to a family, and you meet the carer in person before any arrangement begins. You choose the person yourself, on your own terms. We know this week is a lot. If it helps to talk it through, you can email us at hello@hibantcare.com or call us 02078701352 or take a look at www.hibantcare.com.

Tonight, if you do nothing else: ring the ward in the morning and ask for the discharge coordinator by name. That one conversation opens everything else.

Hibant

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