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How to Assign Regular Carers for Alternating Visits
How to Assign Regular Carers for Alternating Visits

Template different carers for the same care recipient on an alternating basis.

Anjelica avatar
Written by Anjelica
Updated over 6 months ago

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You would use the below method if you need to template different care professionals for the same care recipient on an alternating basis. This will ensure the template feature works accurately and that the correct care professionals are being allocated for the right visits.

There are two ways to set this up. We will start with option one, which will be creating the schedules from scratch. You would start with this method if you are onboarding a new care recipient and know that the visit schedule will be alternating.

The below scenarios are examples, you can set the alternating schedules to what works in your agency and for your care recipient.

Method 1: Creating the visit schedule from scratch

Start by going to the care recipient's Visit tab, and click on Add visit.

Here you will add the first schedule. In this example, it will be a weekend visit. Select custom, and select repeats every 2 weeks. Now select the days, as this is a weekend schedule, Saturday and Sunday are selected.


You can create a schedule to repeat every 3 or 4 weeks etc, depending on the type of alternating schedule required. When you are done, click Save Schedule.

Once back on the visits tab, you can click the arrows at the top to see the schedule. You will notice that the one week will have no visits.

In order to set the regular care professional for this specific visit schedule you will need to assign them to a visit first. To assign the regular care professional to the visit schedule, click on the visit card and then click Care Team.

As this is a new care recipient you will not see any suggested care professionals under Care team to start, this will be suggested once they have done a few visits.

If the care professional you want is not suggested, click the Find Alternative Carer button and choose the care professional that you want as the regular carer.


To set a regular carer, click the three dots by their name and click regular carer, on the drop-down menu click assign to the whole visit schedule. Please note, they need to be in the same group as the care recipient in order to be set as a regular carer.

When you apply your template, this care professional will be assigned to this schedule.

Now create the second schedule, which will be created on the alternative week to the first schedule. So in this example, the next schedule will start at the beginning of the next week, Again, select custom and select the weekend days.



Add all the details and click Save when you are done. Now when you return to the visits page you can see that there are two schedules. The first set of visits has a care professional assigned and the new schedule will need a care professional allocated.

You can now assign and set a regular care professional to the second schedule like before, however, it will be a different care professional this time.


Method 2: Alternative availability

You can use this method if you have already created the visit schedules but have not set them up to be alternating like in the above scenario, and you need different regular care professionals on an alternating basis.

In this example, the visits are set every week for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and there needs to be two regular care professionals assigned. It is best practice to not have more than two regular carers per care recipient, this can impact the functionality of the template.

Start by selecting the two regular care professionals, you will need to make their availability opposite to one another. Go to Care Professional 1’s profile, and go to their Availability tab.


Input the availability for the days you want them to be the regular care professional, in this example, it is Monday and Tuesday. I will also input the times of the visit and leave room for any travel time.


For a more in-depth guide on how to add availability and absences please read the article- How to create an availability schedule for your Care Professional

Now go to the 2nd Care Professionals profile and add the opposite availability schedule. In this example, I have added it for the Thursday and Friday visits. This will ensure that they will not be overlapping.

Now go back to the care recipient's Visits tab. Here you will assign the regular care professionals as we did earlier - but this time you will set them both as regular carers to the visits that they have availability for.

For example, the care professional Annah is available on Thursday and Friday, so they will be set as the regular carer for those days.



Then do the same on the Monday and Tuesday visits for the other care professional.

Because their availability will be factored in when you apply the template, this will make sure that the correct care professionals are selected. You can now apply your weekly template.

Please read the article- How to apply a template to plan a weekly rota for more info on applying the template.


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