Duties and responsibilities of a care worker: the full list for care homes

The duties and responsibilities of a care worker in a UK care home cover personal care, moving and handling, support with medicines, nutrition and hydration, wellbeing and activities, communication and record keeping, safeguarding, health and safety, and working with families and professionals. The exact mix depends on the service: a support worker in a learning disability home spends more time enabling than doing, a care assistant in a nursing home takes delegated clinical tasks, and a mental health support worker holds risk and relationships as much as personal care.

This guide sets out the full list for registered managers, deputies and owners who need to write a job description, induct a new starter, explain a role at interview or answer the question a candidate always asks: what does a care worker actually do all day? It also covers the qualities that matter, the training the role requires, and how to evidence that staff are doing the job properly.

The short answer

A care worker supports people to live as well and as independently as they can. Day to day that means helping with washing, dressing, continence and mobility; supporting people to eat and drink; prompting or administering medicines where trained; enabling activities, relationships and community life; noticing changes and reporting them; recording what happened; keeping people safe from abuse, infection and accidents; and communicating with colleagues, families and professionals. The role is defined by the person's care plan, bounded by the worker's training and competence, and governed by the Care Certificate, the Skills for Care code of conduct and the CQC regulations. It is skilled work, and the job description should say so.

What does a care worker do?

What does a care worker do, in a sentence? They deliver the care plan. Everything else follows from that. The care plan says how the person wants to be supported, what they can do for themselves, what risks exist and what the home has agreed to do about them. The care worker's day is the care plan turned into action for each of the people they support.

In practice the role has a rhythm. Handover at the start of shift. A morning round of personal care and breakfast. Medicines with or under a senior. Activities, appointments and community time through the day. Lunch, with support for people who need it. Afternoon personal care, rest, more activity. Tea. Evening routines. Records throughout, and handover at the end. Interrupted, constantly, by buzzers, phone calls, visitors, incidents and the people who simply want a conversation.

The role of a care worker is often described by families as looking after people. That undersells it. A good care worker is an observer, a communicator, a safety officer, an advocate and a record keeper, and they are doing all of it at once.

Care worker, care assistant, support worker, HCA

The titles vary and the differences are partly historical. Care assistant and care worker are used interchangeably in residential and nursing homes. Support worker is the usual title in learning disability, autism and mental health services, where the emphasis is on enabling people to do things rather than doing things for them. Healthcare assistant or healthcare support worker is the NHS title and is sometimes used in nursing homes for staff taking delegated clinical tasks.

The duties and responsibilities of a support worker overlap heavily with those of a care assistant, but the balance is different. A support worker may spend the day helping someone learn a bus route, cook a meal or attend college, with personal care a small part. A care assistant in a nursing home may spend most of the shift on personal care, repositioning and nutrition for people with high dependency. Job descriptions should reflect the real balance rather than a generic template.

Whatever the title, the same standards apply: the Care Certificate for induction, the Skills for Care Code of Conduct for Healthcare Support Workers and Adult Social Care Workers for conduct, and the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 for the service as a whole.

At a glance: care worker duties and what governs them

The five key duties of a care assistant

Managers are often asked for the 5 key duties of a care assistant, usually by a candidate or a training provider. If the list has to be short, this is the honest version.

1. Personal care with dignity: supporting people with washing, dressing, continence and mobility in the way they choose.
2. Keeping people safe: noticing risk, following moving and handling and infection control practice, reporting incidents and recognising abuse.
3. Supporting health: nutrition, hydration, medicines support where trained, and noticing and reporting changes in condition.
4. Supporting wellbeing: enabling activity, relationships, choice and community, not just physical care.
5. Communicating and recording: accurate notes, clear handover and honest communication with the person, colleagues, families and professionals.

The rest of this guide expands each area and adds the ones that get left off short lists but matter in inspection: working with families, professional boundaries and the duty to speak up.

Personal care and dignity

Personal care is the duty most people think of first and the one where dignity is won or lost. It includes support with washing, bathing and showering, dressing, oral care, shaving, hair and skin care, continence and toileting, and getting up and going to bed. The care plan sets out what the person can do for themselves and where they need help, and the worker's job is to provide exactly that help, no more and no less.

Dignity in personal care means knocking and waiting, explaining what you are about to do, giving choices, covering the person, closing doors and curtains, not rushing, and respecting a refusal. It means noticing the state of the person's skin, mouth, nails and feet, because personal care is the moment when pressure damage, oral problems and infections are first seen. A care worker who notices a red heel and reports it has done more for the person than any amount of efficient washing.

Where the care plan specifies the sex of the worker for personal care, or particular cultural or religious requirements, those are not preferences to be met when convenient. They are part of the duty.

Moving and handling

Supporting people to move safely is a daily duty and a common cause of injury to both residents and staff when done badly. It includes using hoists, slide sheets, stand aids and wheelchairs, supporting transfers, repositioning people in bed, and helping people walk. Every one of these has a right way that depends on the person's assessment.

The duty here is defined by training and the care plan. A worker uses the equipment specified, with the number of staff specified, in the way they were trained. A hoist transfer that the plan says needs two staff is a two-staff transfer even when the shift is short. The sling is checked every time. If the equipment is faulty or the plan seems wrong, the worker reports it and does not improvise.

Moving and handling competency should be assessed in practice, not just in a classroom, and recorded with a date. The training matrix should show who is signed off for which equipment.

Medicines support

Care workers' duties around medicines range from prompting a person who manages their own tablets to administering medicines from a MAR chart, depending on the home's policy and the worker's training. In many residential homes, care workers administer medicines after training and a competency assessment. In nursing homes, administration is usually a nurse's duty with care workers supporting.

Whatever the level, the duties are the same in principle: only do what you are trained and signed off for, follow the MAR and the medicines policy, never sign for a medicine you did not see taken, record refusals, report errors immediately and honestly, and know what PRN medicines are for and when to offer them. Homely remedies, covert administration and controlled drugs each have their own rules that the worker must know before touching them.

Medicines errors are the most common serious incident in care homes and the one where honesty matters most. A worker who reports their own error the same hour has met their duty. One who hides it has not. An electronic MAR reduces errors and makes reporting harder to avoid, but the duty sits with the person.

Nutrition and hydration

Supporting people to eat and drink is a core duty and a clinical one. It includes offering choice, preparing or serving food to the right texture, supporting people to eat at their own pace, encouraging fluids through the day, recording intake where a chart is in place, weighing people as the plan requires and reporting changes in appetite, swallowing or weight.

Texture matters enormously. A person on an IDDSI level 4 pureed diet who is given level 6 food is at risk of choking. The worker's duty is to know each person's texture, to check the plate against the plan, and to speak up if the kitchen has got it wrong. Thickened fluids are the same.

Fluid charts and food charts are only useful if filled in accurately at the time. A chart completed from memory at the end of shift is worse than no chart, because it looks like evidence and is not. Recording at the point of care, in a few taps, is the practical answer.

Wellbeing, activities and relationships

Regulation 9 requires care that meets people's needs and preferences, and that includes their need for occupation, relationships, community and a life that feels like their own. This duty is often the first to be dropped when the shift is busy, and its absence is what makes a home feel like an institution.

The duty includes knowing what each person enjoys and enabling it: a walk, a newspaper, a phone call to a daughter, a trip to the shops, a football match, a faith service. It includes supporting relationships between residents and with families, and noticing loneliness and low mood. In learning disability and mental health services it is often the main duty, with the support worker's day built around the person's goals.

Activity is not a separate job for the activities coordinator. Every care worker carries this duty, and the daily record should show it: not activities offered, but what the person did and how they seemed.

Communication and records

Every duty above generates a duty to communicate and record. Care workers write daily notes, complete charts, contribute to handover, tell the senior about changes, speak to families, and pass information to visiting professionals. The standard is that a colleague who has never met the person could read the record and know how they are and what to do.

Good daily notes are factual, specific, timed and about the person. Our guide to daily care notes with examples shows the difference between a note that says personal care given and one that says what actually happened. Records are also legal documents: they will be read by inspectors, safeguarding teams, coroners and solicitors, and the worker who wrote them may be asked to explain them years later.

Communication with the person is a duty in itself. Care Certificate standard 6 covers it. For people who do not use speech, it means learning their method, whether that is Makaton, symbols, objects of reference or knowing what a particular sound means. The care plan should say, and the worker should follow it.

Safeguarding and raising concerns

Every care worker has a duty to recognise abuse and neglect, to act to protect the person, to report what they have seen, and to cooperate with any enquiry. The Care Act 2014 sets the framework and Regulation 13 makes it a requirement on the home. Care Certificate standards 10 and 11 cover safeguarding adults and children.

The duty is not limited to abuse by others. A worker who sees a colleague being rough, hears a resident being mocked, notices unexplained bruising or discovers money missing must report it, that shift, to the senior or manager, and knows they can go to the local authority or CQC directly. The Skills for Care code of conduct makes raising concerns a professional expectation, and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 protects the worker who does.

Managers should make this duty explicit in the job description, cover it in induction with real examples, and revisit it in supervision. The worker who has never been told what to do with a concern is the worker who does nothing.

Health and safety and infection control

Care workers carry health and safety duties under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 as employees, and under the home's policies. That means following infection prevention practice, hand hygiene, use of personal protective equipment, safe handling of waste and laundry, and reporting outbreaks. It means fire safety: knowing the evacuation plan, the PEEPs, and what to do when the alarm sounds. It means reporting hazards, faulty equipment and near misses, and completing incident reports.

It also means the worker's own safety: not lifting without equipment, taking breaks, reporting injuries and saying when they are not fit to work. A worker who comes in with a stomach bug has breached their duty to the residents, however well intentioned.

Infection control practice is where inspectors observe most closely. A worker who moves between residents without washing their hands has undone every policy in the folder.

Working with families and professionals

Care workers are the people families see most and the people professionals rely on for accurate information. The duty includes greeting and updating families, passing on their concerns, respecting confidentiality about other residents, and knowing what can and cannot be shared.

With professionals, the duty is accurate, prompt information. A GP, district nurse or paramedic needs to know what the worker has observed: when the change started, what the person has eaten and drunk, what the bowels have done, what the pain looks like. Care workers should be confident giving that information and know where to find it in the record if they were not on shift.

Professional boundaries belong here too. The relationship with residents and families is warm but bounded: no gifts of value, no personal financial dealings, no social media contact, no favouritism. The Skills for Care code of conduct sets the standard and the job description should reference it.

Duties in learning disability and autism services

The duties and responsibilities of a support worker in a learning disability service are shaped by enabling. The person may need little personal care but a great deal of support to plan their day, manage money, use transport, keep appointments, cook, maintain relationships and stay safe in the community. The support worker's job is to do things with the person, not for them, and to withdraw support as the person's skills grow.

Specific duties include following a positive behaviour support plan, using the person's communication method, supporting reasonable adjustments in healthcare, keeping the hospital passport current, supporting the person to understand and contribute to their care plan in easy read, and recording behaviour using ABC charts where the plan requires. Restrictive practices, where used, must follow the plan and be recorded every time.

The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism is now required for all staff in CQC-registered services and should appear on the training matrix alongside the Care Certificate.

Duties in mental health services

A support worker in a mental health rehabilitation or residential service holds risk and recovery alongside daily living. Duties include supporting the person's recovery plan, monitoring mental state and reporting changes, supporting medication concordance, following the risk management plan including any observation levels, supporting the person to access community mental health services and meaningful activity, and responding to crisis in line with the plan.

The relationship is the intervention. Consistency, honesty and boundaries matter more here than in most settings, and the duty to record includes mental state, mood, sleep, engagement and any expressions of self-harm or risk to others. Where the person is subject to the Mental Health Act, staff need to understand what section 17 leave, section 117 aftercare and a community treatment order mean for their duties.

Duties in nursing homes: delegated tasks

In nursing homes, care workers may take on tasks delegated by a registered nurse: recording observations, simple wound dressings, catheter care, supporting PEG feeding, blood glucose monitoring and similar. Delegation is lawful when the nurse has assessed the worker as competent, the worker accepts the task, and the nurse remains accountable for the decision to delegate.

The worker's duty is to take on only what they have been trained and signed off for, to follow the instruction exactly, to record what they did and to report anything unexpected to the nurse immediately. The home's delegation policy should list which tasks may be delegated and to whom, and the competency record should be in the worker's file.

Senior care worker duties

A senior or team leader carries all the care worker duties plus shift leadership: allocating work, supervising and supporting staff on shift, leading handover, administering or overseeing medicines, escalating to the manager or on-call, liaising with professionals and families, responding to incidents, and ensuring records are complete before the shift ends.

Seniors also carry the duty to delegate safely, meaning they must know who on the shift is competent for what, and the duty to challenge poor practice on the floor. Many seniors are promoted for being good care workers and given no training in leadership. The job description should be honest about the difference, and the induction to the senior role should cover it.

Qualities of a carer

Managers asked about the qualities of a carer tend to reach for kindness first, and it matters, but it is not enough. The qualities that predict a good care worker in practice are these.

• Reliability: turning up, on time, every shift, and finishing what they start
• Observation: noticing the small changes that others miss
• Honesty: reporting their own mistakes and other people's poor practice
• Patience: with people who take time, repeat themselves or refuse
• Respect: treating people as adults with rights and history, whatever their needs
• Communication: listening, explaining, writing clearly
• Resilience: managing the emotional weight without becoming hard
• Willingness to learn: taking feedback, asking when unsure, completing training

Recruit for these and train for the rest. A worker with these qualities and no experience will be competent within months. A worker with experience and none of them will be a problem for years.

Training and qualifications

No formal qualification is required to start as a care worker in England, but the Care Certificate must be completed during induction. It has 15 standards covering the worker's role, personal development, duty of care, equality and diversity, person-centred working, communication, privacy and dignity, fluids and nutrition, mental health, dementia and learning disability awareness, safeguarding adults, safeguarding children, basic life support, health and safety, handling information, and infection prevention and control. Our guide to evidencing the Care Certificate covers how to sign it off properly.

Mandatory and statutory training varies by service and is set out in our guide to mandatory training for care home staff. It typically includes moving and handling, fire safety, infection control, safeguarding, basic life support, food hygiene, Mental Capacity Act, medicines where relevant, and the Oliver McGowan training. The Level 2 Diploma in Care is the usual next qualification, and the Level 3 Lead Adult Care Worker diploma for seniors.

Training records with expiry dates, competency sign-offs and supervision notes belong in one place per worker, so the manager can see at a glance who is due for what.

A care worker job description outline

Use this as a skeleton and adapt it to your service. The care worker job description should describe your home, not a generic one.

• Job title and reports to: Care Worker, reporting to the Senior Care Worker and Registered Manager.
• Purpose: to support residents to live safely, comfortably and as independently as possible, in line with their care plans and the home's values.
• Personal care: support with washing, dressing, continence, oral care and mobility, respecting dignity, choice and cultural needs.
• Health: support with nutrition, hydration and medicines as trained; observe and report changes in condition.
• Wellbeing: enable activities, relationships, community access and choice in daily life.
• Safety: follow moving and handling, infection control, fire and health and safety practice; report incidents, hazards and near misses.
• Safeguarding: recognise and report abuse and neglect; raise concerns internally or externally.
• Records and communication: maintain accurate, timely records; contribute to handover; communicate with families and professionals.
• Conduct: work within the Skills for Care code of conduct and the home's policies; maintain professional boundaries and confidentiality.
• Development: complete the Care Certificate, mandatory training and supervision; take part in appraisal.
• Person specification: the qualities above, right to work, enhanced DBS, and any service-specific requirements.

From job description to competent worker

1. Recruit against the person specification, with values-based interview questions and a scenario or two.
2. Complete safe recruitment checks: enhanced DBS with adult barred list, references, right to work, identity and employment history.
3. Give the job description and the code of conduct at offer, and have both signed at induction.
4. Deliver induction: the home, the people, the policies that apply, the Care Certificate started, mandatory training booked.
5. Shadow for the first week with a named mentor and daily feedback.
6. Assess competency in practice for moving and handling, medicines if relevant, and any delegated tasks, and record the sign-off.
7. Hold supervision at the end of weeks two, six and twelve, then to the home's schedule.
8. Review at the end of probation against the job description, with evidence from supervision, observation and records.

Describing your own work role

Care Certificate standard 1 asks the worker to describe the duties and responsibilities of their own work role. Managers should use it as a real conversation rather than a workbook exercise. Ask the new worker to describe what they do, who they support, what they are and are not allowed to do, who they report to and what they would do in three or four common situations. The answers reveal whether the job description has landed.

Revisit the question at probation review and annual appraisal. Roles drift: a worker who started as a care assistant may now be doing delegated clinical tasks or leading shifts without the job description changing. When that happens, either update the description and the pay, or stop the drift. A worker doing duties their job description does not cover is a risk to them and to the home.

Common mistakes

• Generic job descriptions that describe no real home and are never read again after signing.
• Treating personal care as the whole job and wellbeing as an extra for quiet days.
• Letting workers administer medicines, use hoists or take delegated tasks before competency is assessed and recorded.
• Records written at the end of shift from memory, so charts and notes do not reflect what happened.
• Not telling new workers how to raise a concern, then being surprised when they do not.
• Promoting good care workers to senior without training them to lead.
• Role drift: workers doing tasks their job description, training and pay do not cover.
• Ignoring professional boundaries until a problem with gifts, money or social media forces the issue.

What good looks like on inspection day

The inspector asks a care worker what their role involves and gets a confident answer that names personal care, health, wellbeing, safety, safeguarding and records, with examples from the people they support. The inspector asks what they would do if they suspected abuse and gets the internal route and CQC. The inspector asks whether they have ever been asked to do something they were not trained for and gets an honest answer, ideally that they said no and the manager supported them.

The personnel file shows a signed job description, the code of conduct, DBS and references, the Care Certificate completed with dated assessments, mandatory training in date, competency sign-offs for moving and handling and medicines, and supervision records with real content. The training matrix agrees with the file. Daily logs written by the worker are timed, specific and about the person. The MAR is complete and refusals are coded.

Good also shows on the floor. The inspector watches a personal care interaction, a mealtime and a medicines round, and sees what the records describe. A daily log completed at the point of care and a care plan the worker has clearly read are the difference between a home that describes good practice and a home that does it.

Final conclusion

The duties and responsibilities of a care worker are broad, skilled and governed by law, and the job description should say so honestly. Personal care, health, wellbeing, safety, safeguarding, records and communication are the core in every setting, with the balance shifting for learning disability, mental health and nursing services. Recruit for reliability, observation and honesty, induct through the Care Certificate with real competency assessment, keep the records in one place, and revisit the role as it changes. Do that and the answer to what a care worker does is visible in every file and on every shift.

Frequently asked

What are the main duties and responsibilities of a care worker?

Personal care with dignity, safe moving and handling, support with medicines where trained, nutrition and hydration, wellbeing and activities, accurate records and communication, safeguarding and raising concerns, health and safety and infection control, and working with families and professionals. All of it is defined by each person's care plan and bounded by the worker's training.

What are the 5 key duties of a care assistant?

If the list must be short: personal care with dignity, keeping people safe, supporting health including nutrition and medicines, supporting wellbeing and activities, and communicating and recording accurately. Safeguarding sits inside keeping people safe and applies to every worker.

What is the difference between a care worker and a support worker?

The duties overlap heavily but the balance differs. A support worker in a learning disability, autism or mental health service spends more time enabling people to do things for themselves, in the community and towards their own goals, with personal care a smaller part. A care worker or care assistant in a residential or nursing home typically spends more of the shift on personal care and physical support.

What qualifications does a care worker need?

No formal qualification is required to start in England, but the Care Certificate with its 15 standards must be completed during induction, along with mandatory training for the service and competency assessments for tasks such as moving and handling and medicines. The Level 2 Diploma in Care is the usual next step, and Level 3 for senior roles.

Can care workers give medicines?

In many residential homes, yes, after training and a recorded competency assessment, following the MAR chart and the home's medicines policy. In nursing homes administration is usually a registered nurse's duty with care workers supporting. Workers must only do what they are trained and signed off for, and must record refusals and report errors immediately.

What qualities make a good carer?

Reliability, observation, honesty, patience, respect, clear communication, resilience and a willingness to learn. Kindness matters but is not enough on its own. Managers should recruit for these qualities and train for the technical skills.

What should a care worker job description include?

The job title and reporting line, the purpose of the role, duties under personal care, health, wellbeing, safety, safeguarding, records and communication, the conduct expected including the Skills for Care code of conduct and professional boundaries, training and development requirements, and a person specification. It should describe your home and your residents, not a generic service.

Sources

• Skills for Care: The Care Certificate standards
• Skills for Care: Code of Conduct for Healthcare Support Workers and Adult Social Care Workers
• Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014
• CQC: Regulation 18 Staffing
• Care Act 2014
• Mental Capacity Act 2005
• Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974
• Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism