Home Carer (Domiciliary Care Worker) CV Examples & Writing Guide

A fictional carer working for a home care agency. The care tasks are named exactly, the client conditions are stated, and the numbers are the ones home care actually measures: hours, clients, falls, weight, calls on time.

The person reading is filling calls in a client's home, alone, often with a family watching. Four questions decide whether you get a call, and they are not the ones most carers write about.

• Can you be sent out alone tomorrow? That means induction and shadow shifts done, the Care Certificate under way or complete, first aid current and an Enhanced DBS check cleared. Say all of it in one block near the top.
• What level of care can you handle? Moving and handling is the dividing line. A carer who can use a hoist, work double-up calls and give continence care is a different hire from one who does companionship and light housework.
• Have you worked with dementia, end-of-life care or distressed behaviour? These are the hardest calls to staff, and naming them honestly moves you to the top of the list.
• Will you turn up? Missed and late calls are the number one problem in home care. Your on-time call rate, years with the same clients, weekend and evening availability and reliable transport all answer this directly.

“The CVs I call are the ones that name the care: transfers, continence care, dementia, hospice. Anyone can write "compassionate and caring". Tell me you did hoist transfers and waking nights and I will find you hours this week.”

Three or four lines: years, round or setting, the hardest care you provide, and your training. Use a career objective only if you are new to paid care work.

Almost every carer CV says "assisted clients with daily living activities". Name the task, the condition and the result. Home care hiring runs on specifics, because the coordinator is matching you to a real person's needs.

Group the list so a coordinator can match you to a care package in seconds. Twelve to sixteen items is enough.

• Personal care: washing and showering, bed baths, dressing, grooming, oral and denture care, toileting, continence and catheter care within your training, skin checks and repositioning to prevent pressure sores.
• Mobility: handling belt use, stand aids, mobile and ceiling hoists, double-up transfers, walking frame and wheelchair handling, range-of-movement exercises, falls prevention and home environment checks.
• Conditions you have real experience with: Alzheimer's and other dementias, Parkinson's, stroke recovery, COPD and home oxygen, diabetes, heart failure, end-of-life and palliative care, learning disabilities.
• Household and daily support: meals for prescribed diets, food shopping to a budget, laundry, light housework, driving to appointments, pet care where it is part of the care plan.
• Recording and rules: following the care plan, electronic call monitoring apps, reporting changes in condition, UK GDPR and client confidentiality, infection prevention and hand hygiene.
• The human part, written concretely: keeping a routine for a client who cannot cope with change, calm redirection instead of argument, and clear communication with adult children who are anxious about their parent.

What carers may do varies by employer and training, especially around medication, injections, wound care and tube feeding, which are usually delegated healthcare tasks with their own training and sign-off. Write only what you were trained and signed off to do, and check your agency's policy before you claim a task in an interview.

Home care is a regulated service: agencies in England are registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own regulators. Put this in one clear block, because a coordinator cannot offer you calls until every line of it is satisfied.

• The Care Certificate: the induction standard for new care workers in England, usually completed in your first 12 weeks alongside shadow shifts. Say when you completed it and with which employer.
• Level 2 or Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care (older titles include the Health and Social Care diploma and NVQ). Worth more to most agencies than induction training alone, and often asked for in senior carer roles. List the level and the year.
• Personal assistant work: if a client employed you directly through direct payments, list it as a job and name the training your employer arranged, rather than assuming the reader knows the set-up.
• First aid: expected by nearly every agency, often Emergency First Aid at Work or a care-specific basic life support course. Put the renewal year on the page.
• Dementia care training: many agencies train to the tiers of the Dementia Training Standards Framework. It is one of the easiest things to add that makes you easier to place.
• Enhanced DBS check with the adults' barred list, references and right-to-work checks: agencies run these anyway, so saying your DBS is current and on the Update Service removes a delay from hiring you.
• Driving licence, car and business insurance: a large share of home care adverts require them because you drive between calls and sometimes take clients out. Say so explicitly, including whether your insurance covers business use.

Home care hires more people with no formal experience than almost any other field, because the shortage is real. Your job on the page is to make it obvious you are safe to send out and will turn up.

1. 1Count unpaid caring as experience, because agencies do. Write it as a role: "Unpaid Carer, 2021 to 2025, full-time care for a parent with Parkinson's disease" with the same task bullets you would use for a paid job.
2. 2Most agencies train new carers through the Care Certificate and paid shadow shifts, so apply to those and say you are willing to complete training. A short introductory care course before you apply still helps.
3. 3Get a first aid certificate. It costs little, takes a day and removes an objection.
4. 4Pull relevant tasks from other jobs: childcare, hospital housekeeping, kitchen assistant in a care home, hospitality, retail. Handling routines, hygiene, food safety and difficult conversations all transfer.
5. 5State availability plainly. Weekends, early mornings, evening calls, bank holidays and short-notice shifts are the hardest to fill, so offering them makes you far more hireable than any wording change.
6. 6Add the practical facts: full driving licence, car with business insurance, comfortable with pets and smoking households, confident with moving and handling equipment once trained, and happy to complete an Enhanced DBS check.

One page, or two if you have many years and several employers. Reverse-chronological. Plain layout, because agency coordinators often print CVs or read them on a phone between calls. No photo, no date of birth, and no client-identifying details.

• Words worth mirroring: personal care, moving and handling, hoist, double-up calls, dementia, end-of-life care, meal preparation, medication prompting, care plan, changes in condition, call monitoring, Care Certificate, Level 2, Level 3, Enhanced DBS.
• Put training and availability in the top third. These are the two things that decide whether you get calls on the rota.
• List hours per week and shift types you have worked: call rounds, 12-hour shifts, waking nights, sleep-ins, live-in, split shifts, weekends. Coordinators match on this before anything else.
• If you work privately for a family or as a personal assistant rather than for an agency, still list it as employment with dates, hours and duties, and note that references are available from the family.
• Gaps are common in this field and rarely a problem, but label them briefly. "Caring for a family member full time" is a complete answer and reads as relevant experience, not absence.