A home care satisfaction survey tells you what your clients and families think of the service, in their words, while there is still time to act. Most agencies mean to run one and few manage it, because a survey adds work for the same office team that is already stretched. This guide shows a way to run a short phone survey that fits into a normal week, stays on the right side of data protection and turns answers into action.
Why a home care satisfaction survey matters now
Two things have changed. First, regulation is coming, and the standards ask for feedback. Second, there is no national survey of home support to lean on.
On the second point, the National Care Experience Programme is a joint initiative of HIQA, the HSE and the Department of Health. According to HIQA's programme page, it runs surveys such as the National Inpatient Experience Survey, the National Maternity Experience Survey, the National End of Life Survey and the National Nursing Home Experience Survey. The page does not list a home support survey. The programme also offers a Survey Hub with resources for providers who want to run their own surveys. If you want to know what home support clients think, you will have to ask.
On the first point, HIQA's draft National Standards for Home Support Services set out outcomes in the client's voice. Draft Standard 1.4 says people have regular opportunities to give feedback and that their feedback, concerns, complaints and compliments are listened to, recorded and managed in a timely way. Draft Standard 4.4 says the service regularly looks at how to improve, taking people's views into account. The final wording may differ, but the direction is clear. We walk through the full draft in our plain-English checklist.
A survey that nobody acts on is worse than no survey. The point of asking is the next change you make.
What the research can and cannot tell you
Be modest about what phone contact achieves. A 2019 systematic review of nurse-led post-discharge telephone follow-up calls in the Journal of Clinical Nursing covered 10 studies, of which only two were methodologically strong. It found that patient satisfaction was the most consistent benefit and that calls may help meet information needs. It found no support for effects on readmission or mortality. An earlier BMC Health Services Research review of telephone follow-up for chronic disease patients also found the evidence inconclusive for reducing 30-day readmission, with poor methodological quality in the studies.
Those reviews concern hospital discharge, not home support surveys. They suggest that people value being rung. They do not show that a survey call improves health. Treat a satisfaction call as a way to hear and respond, and judge it on whether you responded.
Choose a rhythm you can keep
Pick a frequency that fits your team. A workable rhythm is a short call at the start of care, another after a few weeks and then one every few months. For clients with changing needs, add a call after any significant event. Rotate who you call so that every client hears from you at least once a year, and keep a log.
If you are tempted to survey everyone at once, resist. A steady trickle gives you a continuous picture and spreads the follow-up work.
Five questions that work by phone
Short surveys finish. Long ones lose people. Use plain language and a simple scale, such as a rating from one to five followed by "why?". These five cover what matters.
- "Overall, how are you finding your care at the moment?" A rating and a few words.
- "Do your carers usually arrive when you expect them?" Tests reliability.
- "Do they treat you with respect and listen to you?" Tests dignity.
- "Do you know who to ring if something is wrong, and does anyone answer?" Tests access, day and night.
- "Is there anything you would like us to change?" Leaves space for what you did not think to ask.
Add a closing line: "Would you like someone from the office to ring you about anything we have talked about?" That one question turns a survey into a service.
For family members, use the same questions with "your mother" or "your father" in place of "you", and ask whether they know who to contact. Check that the client is happy for you to speak to the family.
A short script for the call
Keep the opening honest and brief.
"Hello, this is [name] calling from [agency]. Is now a good time for a few minutes? We ring clients to ask how care is going, so we can make it better. Your answers are recorded in your file and shared only with the people who need them. You can say no at any time."
If the call is made by an automated assistant, it must say so at the start. Under Article 50 of the EU AI Act, people must be informed that they are interacting with an AI system unless that is obvious from context. Our article on AI voice and GDPR covers this in detail. Hettie, for example, opens each satisfaction call by saying who is calling, that it is an automated assistant and that the call is recorded.
What to do with what you hear
The survey is only half the work. Decide in advance what happens to each type of answer.
| What you hear | What happens |
|---|---|
| A compliment | Logged, shared with the carer and recorded for your quality file |
| A mild complaint, such as lateness | Logged as a complaint, passed to the coordinator, callback promised |
| A concern about safety, such as a fall or a missed medicine | Treated as urgent. A nurse or manager is told straight away, not at the end of the week |
| A safeguarding concern | Handled under your safeguarding policy immediately |
| "Please stop ringing me" | Respected at once and recorded. Review with your data protection lead |
| Distress or low mood | Offered a call from a person, with the offer logged |
A call that surfaces an urgent issue is no different from one that comes in at 11pm. It needs the same chain. Use the same escalation rules you would use for out-of-hours calls, and read our guide to writing on-call escalation rules if you have not set them out yet.
Keep the workload down
Three habits keep the survey from becoming another burden.
- Batch the calls. Block one hour twice a week. Ring in that hour and no other.
- Use a shared sheet with fixed fields. Date, client, who spoke, rating, comment, action, owner, date closed.
- Limit follow-up to what needs a person. Compliments and neutral answers need a log entry. Complaints and concerns need a named owner.
If your team cannot make the calls at all, consider a service that makes them for you, records the answers and sends the concerns on. Check how it handles data, because a satisfaction call collects information about people's care. You are the controller of that data and a supplier is your processor. A written contract is required, as we explain in the GDPR guide above. Our Patient Satisfaction module describes how this works for care teams.
Close the loop
People tell you things when they believe you will listen. Show them you did.
- Tell clients what changed. A short note in the next newsletter or a line on the next call: "You told us carers were arriving late in the morning, so we changed the rota."
- Tell staff what was praised. Share the compliments by name.
- Report to your board or owners. A one-page summary each quarter. Include what clients said, what you changed and what is still open.
- Compare with your call data. If clients say they cannot get through, check the numbers using the method in our article on counting missed calls.
Make it part of your regulation file
Keep the survey results, the log of actions and the quarterly summary in one place. When the Home Support Providers Act 2026 commences, this folder will help show that you listen, record and act on feedback. It will also help you in tenders and in conversations with families. A modest, steady survey with visible follow-through is worth more than an ambitious one that stops after a month.
Sources
- HIQA: National Care Experience Programme
- HIQA: Draft National Standards for Home Support Services (November 2024)
- Woods C et al.: Nurse-led postdischarge telephone follow-up calls, a mixed study systematic review (Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2019)
- Jayakody A et al.: Effectiveness of interventions utilising telephone follow up in reducing hospital readmission within 30 days for individuals with chronic disease, a systematic review (BMC Health Services Research, 2016)
- EU AI Act, Article 50: Transparency obligations
- William Fry: Home Support Providers Act signed into law
Frequently asked questions
How often should we survey home care clients?
There is no set rule in what we found. A short call at the start of care, after a few weeks and then every few months is a common rhythm. Choose one you can keep, and add a call after any significant event.
Do we need consent to ring clients for a satisfaction survey?
You need a lawful basis and must tell people how their data is used. Satisfaction calls can often sit within your care and quality purposes, but the right basis depends on your circumstances. Agree it with your data protection officer, tell clients in your service guide, and respect anyone who asks you to stop.
What if a client mentions a fall or a safeguarding concern on a survey call?
Treat it as urgent. A satisfaction call is a feedback channel, and it can also be where a worry first comes out. Pass it straight to a nurse or manager under your escalation rules, and record what was said and who acted.
