We support older and disabled people who experience difficulties doing their own domestic tasks, shopping and errands or who need or would like one to one assistance to go out and about.

We charge £19.80 per hour for home help support and £20.80 per hour for our one to one assisted outings service. Our hourly rate is lower than other agencies because we are a charity, therefore we have no paid directors, large overheads or shareholders. We prefer to pass these savings onto our clients instead. As a charity, we are also able to raise funds to provide the service free of charge depending on the type of funding we are able to raise. All of the news about any free services we have available will always be on the home page of our website, so please keep checking.

We cover the whole borough of Gateshead. If you live in the surrouding areas, get in touch on 0191 4785919 as we may be able to support you.

All of our initial home visits are carried out by our Project Co-ordinator, Liz Close, who has been working for Happy to Help Gateshead for many years and has a wealth of experience of supporting older and disabled people. If you'd like to chat to Liz, she's available on 0191 4785919.

As a charity, we provide you with a number of services and promises that offer Added Value that a private company is not obliged to offer. For Happy to Help Gateshead, we fulfil our promises to put people over profit, and this means that every service we deliver and decision that we make has to be in the interest of our community to make it a better. We have unpaid directors, no shareholders and low operating costs which allows us to charge our clients the lowest fee possible, and every penny is reinvested into our services and into the community. We are also able to raise funds and apply for charitable grants, to provide free support to the most vulnerable residents in Gateshead. Keep checking our home page of our website, and our social media accounts to keep up to date about our funding news.

When Liz arrives she will show you her ID badge so that you know who she is and that she is from Happy to Help Gateshead. The visit is very informal, and Liz will chat to you about our services, and answer any questions you have. During the visit Liz carries out an assessment to help create your care plan for either Home Help or Outings Support (or both). The total visit lasts about one hour to one hour and 30 minutes depending on individual needs. Your care plan is created based on your needs and wishes. Liz always encourages clients to continue to do what they can safely manage. Some clients prefer to do their own dusting, for example, or like to wash their own benches. Our tailored packages of support ensure that people hold on to their independence and feel in control of their own homes by doing the jobs that they still want to do for themselves. For all of those other jobs, we're more than happy to lend a hand. If you feel like you'd like us to take care of all of the chores, however, that's also absolutely fine by us. To find out more, our Home Assessment Blog has all the info.

All new staff have a DBS check before they start and we ask for two references from previous employers or where this is their first job we ask for two character references. Staff receive training and an induction period with an existing member of staff so that we can make sure that all new staff are right for the job before they start working with our clients.

Our workers will always wear a yellow polo shirt with Happy to Help Gateshead embroidered on the front in navy, on the left hand side. They may also wear a navy tabard over the top of this, which has Happy to Help Gateshead embroidered on the front, on the left hand side, in yellow. They also wear a Happy to Help Gateshead ID badge.

Yes. We have a wonderful team of Home Help Gateshead workers who are all fully trained. What’s more, we match our workers and clients. After decades of experience, we get a good sense of which workers our clients will get on well and who you will be happy to welcome into your home each week. We have a team of cover workers too who you will get to know well. They cover in times of absences of your regular worker (holidays, sickness etc). This means you will always know, trust and look forward to seeing your workers each week. If someone is going to cover your visit, our head office team, Liz and Nancy, will get in touch to let you know in advance.

No. We keep our fee as low as possible and we currently offer the cheapest hourly rate amongst providers of a similar size. We are able to offer low hourly rates for a high quality service due to being a non-profit-making organisation. We are very proud to be able to offer you an affordable service of such high standards and therefore we will always politely decline any other financial contributions from clients or their carers or loved ones.

Happy to Help Gateshead has a wonderful team who are able to provide cover when needed to carry out all of your home help visits or your outing support if your regular worker is unwell or has booked time off. This means that you will always recognise your worker and cover worker and can get to know them well. Our cover workers wears the same uniform as our other workers, and has an ID badge.

Yes. Our wonderful head office team includes Nancy and Liz who are available for you to talk to Monday to Friday’s between 9am and 4:30pm.

Our staff are fully trained and experience to support you if you become unwell or if you are unwell when they arrive. With your permission, they will always get help for you, either by calling the emergency services, your GP, carer or next of kin. They will then contact our head office team so that they are aware of the situation. The last thing we would want, is for our clients to be worried about our service charge in these situations, therefore we would never charge our clients if you become unwell just before, or during our visit.

Happy to Help Gateshead only keeps information that we are required to by the Health and Social Care Act 2008. This includes your contact details, next of kin or emergency contact, name and contact information of any key holders you may have, your GP contact details, any medical conditions we need to know about, and any notes on your wellbeing from when your worker visits you each week. Your care plan is also in your personal file and we also carry out an annual review to see if you are happy with the service and it is making a positive contribution to your life, as well as any concerns or suggestions you have. This is then stored on your personal file.

All of our records are filed securely in locked filing cabinets, in a locked room at our head office at Holy Rosary Parish House, Northumberland Street, Teams, Gateshead, NE8 2PQ. Only our senior members of staff have access to it.

Of course! If you wish to read your client file, you can do so at any time. Simply contact Liz or Nancy on 0191 4785919.

We keep your file for 3 years from the end of the financial year within which services were terminated. This is to allow any clients who leave the service temporarily, to restart their services quickly and easily, making changes to their care plans if necessary.

We never charge clients who cancel a visit so long as we have 48 hours’ notice. If you become very unwell or admitted into hospital within 48 hours, we will never charge.

There are a number of ways to pay depending on your preferences. Some clients like to pay the worker, who then brings this payment to the head office at the end of the week. They will leave you a receipt as proof of payment. You can pay by cheque, or we can send you an invoice. Some clients have a family member of carer pay for the visit on their behalf too.

Of course! We will do as much as we can to help during those times where things don’t always work out. Maybe a relative can’t do your shopping or you haven’t been well enough to do it yourself. Our workers will be more than happy to nip out to get your what you need during the time they usually spend with you. It might mean that a few of the chores do not get finished but we’ll decide together which jobs you’d like done and which you are happy for us to leave while we nip to the shops.

Our workers always have disposable gloves and aprons, a circuit code breaker and anti-bacterial hand gel.

Our policy at Happy to Help Gateshead is to use the products that our clients prefer. It also means that we can keep our charges to our customers as low as possible. When we create our care plans with you, we’ll write down all of your preferences so that we use the products you want us to. We recommend that you have dusters, cleaning cloths, sponges, your preferred choice of floor and surface cleaner and mop and bucket for our workers to do a thorough job.

You always receive the full time that you pay for. We never leave early, even when all of the jobs are done for the day. Our workers are in no rush to leave early to get to the next client either, as we always give them plenty of travel time in between clients to ensure that they’re with you for the full time you’ve asked for. If our workers get all of the regular jobs done, they’ll ask you if there is anything else you would like them to do in the remaining time and they’ll get as many of those jobs done in the remaining time as possible. Many clients, and their families, ask that if there is any spare time remaining after all of the jobs are done, that we spend the remaining time chatting to our clients who may not have much company for the rest of the day. Once all of the jobs are done, this is often the time that our customers say that they value most.

Yes. If you’d like a different job done one week, just ask your worker. If you think you might need more or less support each week thereafter, or would like to talk about updating your care plan, just contact Liz at our head office on 0191 4785919 and we’ll pop out to see you or have a chat over the phone and write up a new plan for your worker to carry out.

We will always provide you with the time you feel you need. If you would like to shorten your home help visits, that can be arranged quickly and we’ll work with you to see which jobs from your care plan you would no longer require so that the new time can be spent doing the jobs you need us to do. If you would like to increase your time, that can also be arranged whenever you wish. We will discuss what you would like your worker to do in the extra time. If your worker has a regular client that they visit before and after they carry out your visit, we may need to work out how we can increase your time so that we can stay as close as possible to your current weekly day and time, but this may not always be possible and we may need to move it to an alternative day or time but we will discuss this with you until you are 100% happy with what the new arrangements are.

Unfortunately, we do not offer personal care which includes cooking, dressing, help to bathe or shower, or to use the toilet.

Unfortunately, our workers are unable to purchase alcohol on your behalf. We also cannot put the lottery on for you or place any bets or any other gambling on your behalf.

Your worker can collect your prescriptions for you when they do your weekly shopping but we are unable to buy over the counter medication on your behalf.

All staff are given training including wheel chair handling and they spent time shadowing our other workers so that they are fully trained and experienced before they begin working with clients. Our workers are fully insured too.

Yes, our workers are fully trained to support you in your wheelchair or with any walking aides.

We can help you to go wherever you want to go. The list is endless but here are just a few examples of where other people like to go with our support:- Shopping (for food, clothing, gifts for loved ones or just to browse) Pubs, restaurants, cafes Garden centres A regular walk in the local park To have someone with them to travel to see friend or loved ones Appointments (doctors, hospitals, dentists, opticians) To go for haircuts

Unfortunately, none of our workers can provide you with personal care. This means that clients must be able to use the toilet themselves.

When you use any of our services, our Happy to Help Gateshead workers are dedicating their time just to you. This means that on any outing, our workers will be assisting you and will not do their own shopping during this time.

Yes of course, but we recommend that purchases of this kind are kept to a minimum. Our staff are extremely professional and do not expect clients to ever pay for cups of tea, snacks, meals or shopping etc during the outing so we ask our clients never to feel obliged to pay for anything other than the hourly rate and any esential transport costs incurred by the member of staff during the visit.

Your hourly rate covers the time of your worker, and this does not include transport costs.

Yes, many of our clients like to have someone to go to the pub or a restaurant with for a meal or a social outing where they enjoy a small alcoholic or non alcoholic beverage. When we carry out our risk assessments when we first meet a client, we reserve the right to refuse to accompany clients to places where alcohol may be a risk. We recommend that clients do not drink in excess while with their worker and this may need to be reassessed if we feel that a client is in any risk at any time and we reserve the right to refuse to accompany clients at any time to places where alcohol consumption poses a risk.

Yes, you may buy what you wish, however we are unable to purchase alcohol on your behalf.

Yes, of course! If you need help to put your shopping away your worker will ensure that they leave enough time to do this.