Is it safe to let another agency's carer into my client's home?

Yes — but the safety doesn't come from the fact that a carer is "shared"; it comes from what happens before they walk through the door. A borrowed carer is only as safe as their DBS and identity checks, whether a human at both agencies actually approved the match, and how much of your client's care record they're allowed to see. Get those three things right and cross-agency cover is no riskier than sending one of your own staff. Get them wrong and it doesn't matter whose payroll the carer is on.

Why this is the right question to ask

Carer sharing is new territory, so it's reasonable to be cautious. Your registered manager and CQC registration carry the accountability for every visit delivered under your name, whether the carer is your employee or borrowed for the afternoon. That means the question isn't really "is sharing safe in general" — it's "has this specific carer been vetted to a standard I'd trust for my own client, and can I see the evidence?"

The vetting that should stand behind any shared carer

Before accepting a carer from another agency or a freelancer, you should be able to confirm:

• Enhanced DBS check, ideally registered with the Update Service so status can be checked in real time rather than relying on a certificate that could be months old.
• Right-to-work and identity verification, carried out against a recognised standard (UK DIATF-certified identity service providers are the benchmark).
• References and training records appropriate to the tasks they'll be doing — medication support, moving and handling, and so on.
• A clear audit trail of who verified what, and when — not just a verbal assurance.

If a platform or partner agency can't produce this evidence on request, that's your answer: don't accept the carer, and raise it with them directly.

What the carer should — and shouldn't — see

Even a fully vetted carer shouldn't get full access to your client's entire history on day one. Good practice is a consent-scoped handover: the borrowed carer sees only what they need for that visit — care needs, risks, medication due, key contacts — not the full case history, past incidents, or unrelated family information. A short, accurate pre-visit brief (built from your existing records) does more for safety than an open file ever would, because it reduces both error and unnecessary data exposure. This also keeps you on the right side of UK GDPR, since care records are special-category data and access should always be minimised to what's needed.

A human always approves the match

No carer should be placed based on an algorithm's confidence score alone. A trustworthy system will suggest a match — based on proximity, DBS status, and continuity — but a person at your agency (or the client-facing agency) should confirm it before the carer is sent. This is standard good practice whether or not any software is involved, and it's the point where you catch anything a checklist might miss: a carer who's covered too many hours that week, a client with specific preferences, or a concern raised previously.

How Nanum handles this

Nanum's carer-sharing feature is built around exactly this logic: requests to borrow a carer go through an accept/decline step on both sides, never silent auto-placement. Borrowed carers see a consent-scoped slice of the resident's record, supported by an AI-generated handover brief that summarises what they need to know for the visit — not the whole file. The matching engine ranks and suggests carers by proximity, continuity and verification status, with a confidence score, but a human always signs off. None of this replaces your own DBS and right-to-work due diligence — it's designed to make that due diligence visible and consistent, not to bypass it.

Before you say yes to a shared carer

Ask: is their DBS current and checkable? Has their identity been verified to a recognised standard? Will they see only what's relevant to this visit? And is there a named person who approved sending them? If you can answer yes to all four, letting another agency's carer into your client's home is no less safe than sending your own.