Lone working is one of the defining characteristics of domiciliary care. Unlike care home workers who are always on site with colleagues, your care workers go into people's private homes alone. They may face risks that are entirely invisible to the office until something goes wrong.
Your lone working policy must do more than acknowledge this risk. It must demonstrate a systematic approach to assessing, managing, and monitoring the safety of every worker during every shift.
The Legal Basis
Your duty to protect lone workers comes from several pieces of legislation:
- Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 - general duty to ensure the health, safety and welfare of employees as far as reasonably practicable
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 - requires specific risk assessment for lone workers
- Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015 - requires providers to have regard to the need to protect staff from risk
HSE guidance INDG73 (revised 2020) is specifically about lone working and is the document your policy should reference. If your lone working policy does not cite INDG73, that is a gap.
Risk Assessment Before a Visit
Every service user address should be risk-assessed before a care worker visits alone. This is not a generic risk assessment - it is specific to that address, that service user, and that worker.
Your policy must cover what a pre-visit risk assessment includes:
- Address and access arrangements - how does the worker enter, is there a key safe, are there communal areas to navigate
- Known risks at the property - pets, environmental hazards, stairs, clutter
- Service user behaviour - any history of verbal or physical aggression, known triggers, de-escalation strategies
- Third parties who may be present - family members, other visitors, who is and is not authorised to be there
- Mobile phone signal at the address - if poor, what is the contingency
- Emergency exit routes
This information must be in the care plan and accessible to the worker before they arrive - not handed to them at the door.
Check-In and Check-Out Systems
Your policy must specify exactly how you monitor workers during visits. Options include:
- Electronic monitoring via care management software that uses GPS or NFC to confirm arrival and departure
- Telephone check-in at the start and end of each visit
- A buddy system where workers contact a colleague if they have concerns
Whatever system you use, your policy must specify: what the worker does when they arrive, what they do when they leave, how long before a missed check-in triggers a response, and what that response is.
If a worker fails to check out within a defined period - typically 15 to 30 minutes after the scheduled end of visit - what happens? Who contacts them? If there is no response, who goes to the address? What is the escalation to emergency services?
This escalation procedure must be in your policy. It should not require a manager to improvise in a real emergency.
What Workers Do If They Feel Unsafe
Your policy must give workers a clear procedure for what to do if they feel unsafe during a visit. This should include:
- They have the right to leave any situation where they feel at risk - without needing authorisation
- A code word or phrase they can use in a phone call to indicate they need assistance without alerting the person they are with
- What to do once they have left - who to call, what to document
- That leaving a visit early will not result in disciplinary action
The last point is important. Workers who fear being disciplined for leaving early are workers who stay in unsafe situations. Your policy must make clear that safety comes before completion of the care task.
What CQC Looks For
CQC will inspect your lone working policy under Safe - specifically around staffing and safe systems. They will also ask workers directly: "What do you do if you feel unsafe during a visit?" Workers who cannot answer this question, or whose answer does not match your policy, tells an inspector that your policy exists on paper only.
CareDocPro generates a complete Lone Working Policy and Procedure personalised to your agency - including your monitoring system, your escalation procedure, and your registered manager's contact details.