Home & Visiting Care in Inverness

Inverness • Highland

Flexible hourly visiting care at home in Inverness

Not everyone needs round-the-clock support. Sometimes a helping hand at the right moments of the day is all it takes to keep living well at home. Visiting care puts a familiar Care Professional at your door for as little as half an hour or as often as several times a day, doing the specific tasks that have become harder while leaving the rest of your routine exactly as you like it. Across Inverness and the wider Highlands, this is the option most families start with, and Protocol Healthcare Services has spent more than a decade building visit schedules that fit real lives.

We should be honest about how we work. Our offices are in the South of England, so we do not run a shop-front in the Highlands. What we offer instead is a genuinely national service that coordinates vetted, background-checked carers wherever they are needed. Everyone we arrange has completed enhanced disclosure and right-to-work checks, references and training before their first visit, and a consultant is contactable around the clock, so a family in Dalneigh or Culloden gets the same reliability as one near our own front door.

What visiting care in Inverness can include

• ✓ Short drop-in and check-in visits from 30 minutes
• ✓ Help getting up, washed and dressed in the morning
• ✓ Medication prompts and reminders
• ✓ Preparing meals and encouraging good nutrition
• ✓ Shopping, errands and help to appointments
• ✓ Light housework and keeping things in order
• ✓ Companionship and a friendly, familiar face
• ✓ Evening and bedtime calls to settle for the night

Visits built around your week in Inverness

The strength of visiting care is that it bends to fit you rather than the other way around. One person in Crown may want a single morning call to help with washing and breakfast; another in Inshes may prefer four visits a day covering medication, lunch, an afternoon walk and a settle at bedtime. Needs also change, and so can the schedule, week by week. Because our carers get to know the people they visit, they notice the small things that matter, a skipped meal, a change in mood, a new unsteadiness on the stairs, and they let families know before a small worry becomes a bigger one.

Local knowledge across Inverness

Inverness sits where the River Ness meets the Moray Firth, and daily life here ranges from flats near the city centre and the Ness Islands to family homes out in the suburbs. We arrange visiting care across Crown, Dalneigh, Kinmylies, Hilton and Merkinch, and out to the growing eastern communities of Inshes, Culloden, Smithton, Westhill and Milton of Leys, as well as Lochardil and Balloch. Whether the walk to the front door is up a tenement stair or along a quiet close near the Caledonian Canal, we match a carer and a schedule to the person and the place.

Short-term visiting care also helps people find their feet after a hospital stay. Raigmore Hospital, run by NHS Highland, is the district general hospital serving the whole of the Highlands, and coming home after a spell there can be daunting. A few well-timed visits a day help with new medication, meals and gentle rehabilitation, and can be stepped up or scaled back as confidence returns. It is a practical way to stay independent at home rather than moving into residential care too soon.

Funding and how visiting care is arranged in Inverness

Visiting care is charged by the time you actually use, so a package of short calls is often the most affordable way to bring support into the home. Many Inverness families simply self-fund their visits. You may also be entitled to help: The Highland Council social work service can carry out a free care needs assessment followed by a financial assessment under self-directed support, which lets people choose how their assessed support is delivered. Care at home in Scotland is regulated by the Care Inspectorate rather than any English body. Our team is happy to explain the routes, and you can read more on our paying for care guide or browse our full range of services.

Support for care providers in Inverness too

Alongside visiting care for families, we are an REC-affiliated healthcare staffing agency with national reach. Care homes, supported living services and NHS Highland teams across Inverness call on us for reliable cover, from NMC-registered nurses and support workers to mental health and learning disability specialists. If you run a service locally, our staffing services page explains how we help.

Areas of Inverness we cover for visiting care

We arrange hourly visiting care across the city and its surrounding communities, including:

• Crown
• Dalneigh
• Kinmylies
• Hilton
• Inshes
• Culloden
• Smithton
• Westhill
• Milton of Leys
• Merkinch
• Lochardil
• Balloch