Household help after an accident: tasks, hours and supporting evidence

Start with tasks rather than hourly rates

First identify household work that injury prevents or makes harder, such as cleaning, shopping, meals and ordinary childcare. The Council’s guideline page distinguishes this from maintenance and gardening. Describe actual tasks and obtain advice on the right category where uncertain. One general help entry can conceal very different activities.

A useful overview explains required work, who did it beforehand and what changes now. You need not immediately establish every minute or financial value. Begin with an ordinary week and list occasional tasks separately. Clear activities prevent discussions of rates starting before the additional work itself is understood.

Use the earlier household as the comparison

Record the division between residents and any paid help, including shared tasks. Home, family and schedules can make substantial differences. Two adults living together did not automatically share equally. Recurring actual duties give a better starting point than an unexplained standard percentage.

Describe already planned changes such as moving, a child arriving or an existing helper stopping. This context may distinguish accident effects. Preserve available agreements and bills. Label retrospective estimates. The goal is reasonable comparison, not a perfectly reconstructed historical diary presented with certainty despite absent records.

Keep additional-help records simple

Use weekly entries identifying task, helper, duration and reason. Separate people doing different jobs. Hours alone do not show what was needed. Explain whether you helped partly or a task was fully taken over. Discuss how detailed recording needs to be for your individual situation.

For example, one person shops twice and cooks on several evenings while another cleans. Three help types are clearer than a general care sum. Include actual paid costs alongside time. Do not create artificial invoices for unpaid support. Facts are a better basis than documents suggesting payments that never occurred.

• Record who did each task before the accident and who helps now.
• Log the period and hours; honestly state whether help was paid or unpaid.
• Separate gardening and DIY from cleaning, cooking and shopping.

Do not make family help invisible

A partner, parent or friend’s help should not disappear from administration simply because it is informal. Describe your tasks taken over and the household changes. Legal valuation requires separate assessment. Family need not pretend to be businesses, nor should you automatically assume unpaid assistance never matters.

Make practical arrangements clear for helpers too. Can temporary support continue or does another solution need investigating? Expected future help is not a definitive guarantee for years. Sustainability may be separate from compensation for a past period. Keeping both visible supports recovery planning and possible future-loss assessment.

Record paid help and services together

Keep quotations, agreements and invoices from professional help and check tasks, dates and hours are identifiable. Discuss significant or long-term expenses beforehand. Insurer acknowledgment of receiving a bill does not automatically accept full reimbursement. Have specific responses recorded to make expectations clearer.

Where a scheme provides support, note covered activities and costs and what remains personally payable. Access and civil claims may have different rules; ask how they interact. Do not count the same hour as both professional and family help. Distinct tasks, payments and payers make additional questions visible.

What does the household-help guideline provide?

The Council publishes guidance for household support. Check which version and situation a proposal uses. Guidelines do not automatically pay every task at one rate indefinitely. Ask about assumptions concerning limitation, task division and periods used in your calculation.

Court information explains that judges can use guidelines and depart from them. That makes individual substantiation important. At disagreement, request the calculation and reasons your records are followed or rejected. A specific task or period is easier to discuss than saying only that the guideline is too high or low.

Update needs during recovery

Your need for assistance may change as time passes. Record when you resume part of a task or, conversely, when more support becomes necessary. Update the overview without overwriting earlier periods. The number of hours initially needed may later give an inaccurate picture. Agree with your representative when a new overview is useful, so that keeping records does not create an additional daily burden.

For lasting consequences, identify expectations and uncertainty. What is known about future limitations and practically available support? Ask what expertise can assess need. Medical prognosis does not guarantee future family arrangements. Calculations should explain period and allocation assumptions so you understand the final agreement’s boundaries.

Prepare a clear table for discussion

Bring a table showing ordinary tasks, the earlier division of work, extra assistance and its evidence. Leave uncertain matters visible as questions. You might ask about the boundary between cleaning and personal care, or about an occasional maintenance job. Clear classification prevents the same matter appearing under several loss categories. The household-help tool counts the hours you enter yourself without applying a legal rate.

Ask which tasks and periods are accepted and how advances are processed. Have settlement assessed separately where future help is uncertain. Adding hours establishes neither entitlement nor who should pay. A useful next step is a verifiable question about specific necessary help, followed by examination of liability, connection and reasonableness in your own file.