Live-in Carer CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a carer with eight years of care work, the last four living in with one client. The name, the family and the agencies are invented. If you work through an agency rather than privately, or care for a younger adult with a disability, keep the shape and change the conditions and tasks.

You are usually being read by an adult child of the client, sometimes with a care manager from a live-in care agency. They are frightened of hiring the wrong person and they check four things.

• How long you stayed. Two long placements beat eight short ones. Give the exact months, and explain a short one in half a sentence.
• Which conditions you have handled. Alzheimer's and other dementias, stroke recovery, Parkinson's, diabetes, COPD, heart failure, end-of-life care, and recovery after an operation. Families search for their own diagnosis.
• Whether you can do the physical part. Transfers, hoists, bed mobility, whether you can help someone who cannot bear weight. Say the moving and handling methods and equipment by name.
• The practical facts. Driving and own car, cooking, comfort with pets, non-smoker, ability to live in, the breaks and time off you need, and whether you have an Enhanced DBS check.

“The CVs that get a call say how long the carer stayed and what condition the client had. "Cared for elderly clients" tells us nothing about whether that person can safely move someone from a wheelchair to a bed.”

A live-in role is broader than an hourly care call, because you also run the household and are the person who notices change. Use the tasks you actually do, not a generic list.

• Personal care: washing, showering or bed bath, dressing, grooming, oral care, shaving, toileting and continence care, catheter and stoma care if you are trained and signed off.
• Mobility: transfers with a handling belt, stand aid or full hoist, walking frame and wheelchair use, repositioning every two hours, range-of-movement exercises set by a physiotherapist.
• Medication support: prompts, opening containers, checking the pharmacy blister pack, reordering repeat prescriptions, and recording doses. What a carer may do with medication depends on the care plan, your training and who employs you, so describe it as prompting unless you have been trained and assessed to administer.
• Nutrition: shopping, cooking to a prescribed diet, cutting or thickening food as directed by the speech and language therapist, encouraging fluids, and tracking food, fluids and weight.
• Monitoring: basic observations if trained, skin checks, mood and sleep, confusion or new pain, and reporting changes to the family and the GP or district nurse the same day.
• Nights: being available for toileting, wandering or distress at night, and keeping a night log. Most live-in arrangements include a daily break and agreed time off, set with the agency or family, and the details vary, so put your own pattern on the CV rather than assuming a standard one.

Three or four lines: years, live-in or hourly, conditions, hands-on skills, qualifications, and one reliability number. Use a career objective only if this would be your first care job.

Carer CVs are usually a list of soft words: compassionate, patient, dedicated. Replace each one with what you did and how it turned out.

Split into hands-on care, household and monitoring, and the personal qualities stated as facts rather than adjectives.

• Hands-on care: washing and bed baths, dressing, grooming, toileting and continence care, help with eating and swallowing precautions, oral care, skin care and pressure sore prevention
• Mobility and safety: handling belt, stand aid and full hoist, double-up assist, wheelchair and walking frame use, repositioning schedule, falls prevention, home hazard checks
• Condition-specific: dementia redirection and sundowning, Parkinson's cueing, stroke recovery routines, diabetes support, home oxygen, seizure response, end-of-life comfort care

Then the parts that keep a household running and the GP and district nurse informed:

• Meal planning and cooking for prescribed diets, shopping on a budget, laundry, bed linen, light cleaning
• Care records: daily notes, medication records, food and fluid charts, weight, handover notes for relief carers
• Practical facts: driving and own car, non-smoker, comfortable with pets, second language, ability to live in, and the breaks and rota you need
• Reliability, said with numbers: years with one client, missed shifts in the last two years, notice given when you left

Requirements depend on whether you work for a managed live-in care agency (which employs you and, in England, is registered with the CQC), through an introductory agency (which matches self-employed carers with families), or directly for a family. List what you actually hold with the year, and check the agency's or family's requirements before you claim anything else.

• The Care Certificate: the induction standard for new care workers in England. Managed agencies usually put new carers through it, often with extra live-in training. List the year and who you completed it with.
• Level 2 or Level 3 Diploma in Adult Care (older titles include the Health and Social Care diploma and NVQ). Put the level and the year, because agencies check certificates before a placement.
• First aid, ideally Emergency First Aid at Work or a care-specific basic life support course. Keep it current and show the renewal year.
• Dementia training: many agencies train to the tiers of the Dementia Training Standards Framework, and families with a relative living with dementia look for it by name.
• Enhanced DBS check with the adults' barred list. Agencies arrange it for the carers they place; if a family employs you directly, they may ask to see your DBS certificate and your Update Service status. In Scotland and Wales many care workers must also register with the SSSC or Social Care Wales. Check what applies where you work.

Many good carers start after looking after a parent or grandparent. That counts, and you should put it on the CV as work, not as a personal note.

• Give unpaid caring a job title and dates: "Unpaid Carer (full time), family home, 2021 to 2025". Then list the same tasks a paid carer would: personal care, transfers, medication, appointments, cooking.
• Name the condition you cared for and how it progressed. It shows you have seen a real trajectory, not one good week.
• Take a short course before you apply. A first aid certificate and an introductory care or moving and handling course change how an agency reads the page, and both are inexpensive.
• Add the practical facts early: full driving licence, own car, non-smoker, comfortable with pets, willing to live in, and the rota and time off you need.

• One page, or two at most. Families read on a phone, and agency recruiters read fast.
• Order: contact details, personal statement, qualifications, experience, skills, education, references available on request.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no address beyond your town or city. Some carer CV templates from other countries include all of these; UK employers do not need them.
• Mirror the advert: "live-in carer", "companion", "personal care", "moving and handling", "medication prompting", "dementia", "end-of-life care", "meal preparation", "light housework", "care plan".
• Say your availability plainly: a rotation such as two weeks on and two weeks off, live-in five days with weekend relief, or nights only. Availability is the reason most carer applications are turned down.

A last word on references, because they matter more here than in almost any other job. Ask each family for a few written lines when a placement ends. A carer with three named references gets hired ahead of a carer with a better CV and none.