Free care home rota template

How to fill in a care home rota template

A care home rota has to do three things at once: keep every shift safely staffed, give each person their contracted hours, and stay fair over weekends and nights. This template is laid out to make all three visible.

1. Set your shift pattern

   The template uses the most common pattern in UK care homes: early (07:00–14:30), late (14:00–21:30) and waking night (21:00–07:30), with a 30-minute handover overlap. Change the times to match yours before you start.

2. Fill nights first

   Nights are the hardest shifts to cover, so allocate your night staff first, then build days around them. Avoid more than three or four waking nights in a row for one person.

3. Put a nurse or senior in charge of every shift

   Each shift row has a 'person in charge' line. Never leave it empty: it is the first thing an inspector looks for.

4. Check numbers against your dependency needs

   Count the people on each shift against the staffing levels your residents' needs require, and note the totals in the bottom row.

5. Share fairly over four weeks

   Weekends, nights and bank holidays should rotate. The four-week layout shows at a glance whether the same people keep getting them.

6. Record changes

   Sickness and swaps happen. Cross out and initial changes on the printed rota so the record of who actually worked stays clear.

A paper or spreadsheet rota works, but every change has to be copied by hand. ShiftGuard does the same job online: the rota, holiday, sickness and clock-ins in one place, with staff seeing their shifts in an app.