How to become a home-based personal care worker
Official title: Home-based personal care workers
Also called: Home birth assistant, Home care aide, Nursing aide (home), Personal care provider
Home-based personal care workers provide routine personal care and assistance with activities of daily living to persons who are in need of such care due to effects of ageing, illness, injury, or other physical or mental conditions, in private homes and other independent residential settings.
Main tasks
- Assisting clients with personal and therapeutic care needs such as personal hygiene, feeding, dressing, physical mobility and exercise, communication, taking oral medications and changing dressings, usually according to care plans established by a health professional
- Maintaining records of client care, changes in condition and responses to care and treatment, and reporting concerns or providing referrals to a health or social services professional
- Positioning and lifting clients with physical mobility challenges, and helping transport them in wheelchairs and motor vehicles
- Providing clients and families with emotional support, information and advice on topics such as nutrition, hygiene, exercise, caring for infants or adapting to disability or illness
- Maintaining clients’ environmental hygiene standards, such as changing bed linen, washing clothes and dishes, and cleaning living quarters
- Providing psychological support to clients such as through conversation or reading aloud
- Planning, purchasing, preparing or serving meals to meet nutritional requirements and prescribed diets
- Providing support to parents and care for newborns during the postpartum period
- Scheduling and accompanying clients for appointments with medical doctors and other health professionals, or performing other errands
Ways in
- Qualifications Framework: Vocational Qualifications Pathway: Elderly Care Service. The Qualifications Framework publishes a Vocational Qualifications Pathway for the Elderly Care Service industry (安老服務業), showing QF-recognised qualifications by level: https://www.hkqf.gov.hk/ecs/en/vqp. Link between the industry and this job by Peernovo.
Pay · Outlook · AI and this job
- Median pay: HK$16,500 a month
- About 732,700 people in 2025, and about 740,500 projected by 2028. (+1.1%)
- Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
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Questions people ask
How do I become a home-based personal care worker?
Ways in include: Vocational Qualifications Pathway: Elderly Care Service.
Do you need a degree to become a home-based personal care worker?
Usually not. Only 22% of people in this job hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Ways in include: Vocational Qualifications Pathway: Elderly Care Service.
Will AI change the work of a home-based personal care worker?
Generative AI can do relatively little of this work, by the ILO's global estimate.
Sources
- Census and Statistics Department (2021 Population Census): 2021 Population Census, Interactive Data Dissemination Service: working population by occupation (38 groups) and sex, age, education, income; median income and field of education (9 groups) (2021 Population Census), retrieved 4 October 2026
- Census and Statistics Department (General Household Survey): Median monthly employment earnings by occupation (9 groups), excluding foreign domestic helpers (Table 210-06317A); employed persons by occupation, age and sex (210-06307A) and by industry (210-06308A) (2025 annual (series to 2026-07)), retrieved 4 October 2026
- Census and Statistics Department (Annual Earnings and Hours Survey): Monthly and hourly wage percentiles by occupational group (5 groups) (Tables 220-23014, 220-23024, 220-23003) (2025 (May to June 2025), released 2026-03-23), retrieved 4 October 2026
- Labour and Welfare Bureau; tables published by C&SD: Mid-term Update of Manpower Projection to 2028: supplementary statistical tables (5 occupation groups, 17 selected industries) (2025 to 2028 (published 2026-09)), retrieved 4 October 2026
- International Labour Organization, Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure (ILO Working Paper 140, Gmyrek et al.) (ILO Working Paper 140, May 2025, Annex Table A1), CC BY 4.0, retrieved 4 October 2026
Updated 4 October 2026