Your First Shift With a New Support Worker

Do not make the first shift a normal shift

The most common mistake is treating shift one as though the worker already knows the household. Nobody performs well on a first day, and personal care is not a task you want somebody learning on the run.

Plan the first shift as a shorter, lighter version of the real thing: the routine walked through rather than fully delivered, with someone familiar present for at least part of it. It costs a couple of hours and it saves weeks.

Write the one-page profile before they arrive

One page, not a folder. Nobody reads a folder before a first shift. This is the sheet that lives on the fridge or in the shift notes.

• How the person likes to be addressed, and how they communicate a yes and a no. This matters most for someone who does not use speech, and it is the single highest-value line on the page.
• The order the morning runs in, because order is often more important than timing.
• Two things that reliably help when something is going wrong, and two things that reliably make it worse.
• Food and drink: what is a definite yes, what is a definite no, and any mealtime plan that exists. If there is a mealtime management plan, say so explicitly and say where it is kept.
• Medication: who administers, where it is stored, what the sign-off is. Never leave this to be worked out on the day.
• Who to ring, in what order, and what counts as ring now rather than mention later.

On the day itself

Introductions before tasks. Five minutes of ordinary conversation before anything practical starts. The person is meeting someone who will be in their bathroom, and that order of events is not a courtesy, it is dignity.

Walk the house. Where the linen is, which cupboard the cups are in, how the shower taps behave, which door sticks. A worker hunting for a towel mid-routine is a worker who has left someone waiting.

Do the routine with narration. Talk through the steps out loud as they happen. It teaches the sequence faster than a written list and it lets the person correct things in the moment.

Name the boundaries. What the worker does and does not do in this house, phones during shift, social media, gifts, lifts in private cars. Awkward on day one, much worse on day forty.

Leave the shift notes properly. Written on the day, specific, not just 'all good'. The next worker reads these and so do you.

The things people forget

Parking and entry. Where the worker parks, which door they use, whether there is a key or a code, and what happens if the code fails at six in the morning.

The dog. Genuinely. More first shifts go wrong over an unannounced dog than over any support task.

Cultural and religious detail: food, prayer times, whether shoes come off at the door, whether a same-gender worker is required for personal care. Say it plainly rather than hoping it is in a file somewhere.

What the person actually wants out of having a worker. If the goal is getting to the shops independently by March, the worker needs to know that on day one or they will helpfully do the shopping instead.

Review it after three shifts, not three months

Three shifts is enough to know whether the fit is workable, and early enough that changing course is easy. Ask the person directly, in whatever way they communicate best, and watch as well as ask: sleep, appetite and willingness to get up are more honest than an answer given to please you.

Separate two different judgements while you do it. Is this worker learning the routine, which is a training question and fixable. Or is the person not comfortable with this worker, which is not a training question. The second one deserves a change rather than another six weeks of adjusting.

Raising it is not a complaint, it is how rosters are supposed to work. If it needs escalating, our page on in-home support sets out how we handle a change, and who does what at home is useful when the issue is really about scope rather than about the person.

One last thing worth doing: write down what worked. The second time you onboard a worker, that page is the whole job.