In short and in plain language
This post is about care courses for family carers. Some sites only give them half a sentence.
People looking for a course find nothing concrete. When is the next date? Is a place still free?
A course page of its own helps. A calendar shows the dates. Clear facts give the place, length and costs.
The sign-up form stays short. It only asks what the course needs. The course is often the first contact with you.
We build your course page.
Care courses for relatives are anchored in German law and free of charge for participants. On the websites of home care services they still tend to appear as half a sentence under other services. Anyone who wants to know when the next course starts, how long an evening lasts and whether a place is still free finds nothing concrete, and therefore does not call either. A dedicated course page with a date grid, eight clear facts and a short sign-up form turns that half sentence into an enquiry channel that works all year. This article shows which facts belong on the page, how the grid is built and how the sign-up stays data-minimal and low-barrier.
Key takeaways
- Almost 5.7 million (Federal Statistical Office) people in Germany were in need of care in December 2023, and 86 per cent (Federal Statistical Office) of them were cared for at home. The audience for care courses sits in exactly those households.
- Section 45 (1) SGB XI obliges the long-term care funds to run training courses for relatives free of charge; under subsection 2 they may commission other suitable institutions (SGB XI). Your service can take on that role, and the website makes it visible.
- A month grid with marked dates answers the first question faster than any running text: when is the next course, and does it fit into my week.
- 3.1 million (Federal Statistical Office) people in need of care received care allowance only at the end of 2023 and were therefore looked after mainly by relatives. No care service enters those homes, so the course evening is often the first personal contact.
- Experience shows a sign-up needs four fields, not fourteen. Every additional mandatory field is one more reason to close the form, and every entry has to be necessary for running the course.
Why a course page does more than half a sentence
Relatives caring for someone for the first time research online first and phone second. 80 per cent (Federal Statistical Office) of 45- to 64-year-olds searched the internet for information about goods and services in the three months before the 2025 survey, and among 65- to 74-year-olds it was 65 per cent (Federal Statistical Office). That is precisely the age group that either gives care or receives it. So the course page does not compete with the telephone but with a list of search results: whoever finds a page with a date, a time and a place clicks on; whoever only finds the statement that courses are offered clicks back. How to build the remaining content for this audience is covered in website content for relatives.
The second reason is time pressure. Section 2 (1) of the German Care Leave Act gives employees the right to stay away from work for up to ten working days (Care Leave Act) when they have to organise appropriate care in an acute care situation; for the same occasion, section 44a (3) SGB XI provides an entitlement to care support allowance for up to ten working days per calendar year (SGB XI), provided that for that period neither continued pay from the employer nor sickness or injury benefit can be claimed. Those two weeks are when the decisions are made: apply for a care level, obtain aids, choose a service, learn the practical handling. A course page found during that week has, in our experience, more effect than any advertisement in a local paper. The matching neighbouring content is the guide page on applying for a care level.
Why the topic fits your catchment area
What section 45 SGB XI sets out for the course page
Section 45 (1) SGB XI obliges the long-term care funds to run training courses free of charge for relatives and other people interested in voluntary care work (SGB XI). The provision also names the purpose: to make care and support easier and better and to reduce physical and mental strain caused by caring (SGB XI). For your page that means two things. First, the course is free for participants, and that may be stated clearly where it will be read. Second, the course is not a sales event but a statutory benefit; the tone of the page should reflect that.
The funds do not have to run the course themselves. Under section 45 (2) SGB XI a care fund may run the courses itself, jointly with other care funds, or commission other suitable institutions to do so (SGB XI); on uniform delivery and on the content of the courses, the regional associations may conclude framework agreements with the providers under section 45 (3) SGB XI (SGB XI). This is exactly where a home care service fits in. Two further sentences of the provision also belong on the page: at the request of the caring person and the person in need of care, the training also takes place in the home environment (SGB XI), and the care funds are to offer digital care courses as well, without this affecting the duty to run courses on site (SGB XI). If you offer both routes, put both on the page: one-to-one training at home and a course evening on your own premises.
The long-term care funds are required to run training courses free of charge for relatives and other people interested in voluntary care work, in order to promote and strengthen social engagement in the field of care, to make care and support easier and better, and to reduce physical and mental strain caused by caring and prevent it from arising.
The eight facts without which nobody enquires
A course page rarely fails because of its text and far more often because facts are missing. Anyone who wants to sign up is looking for eight facts, and the page either delivers them within the first two screens or not at all. The following list is the minimum; everything else, such as the content of each evening, the name of the course leader or the equipment of the room, can sit below it.
- Date and time for each evening, written out as a date and not only as a weekday. A grid with four marked dates is grasped faster than a paragraph containing four dates.
- Length of the series and length of a single evening. Relatives arrange cover for the time they are away and need a number for that, not a phrase such as early evening.
- Place with address, floor and a note on access. Whether there is a lift and a parking space decides more often about attendance than the programme does, especially for relatives of older people.
- Cost. Under section 45 (1) SGB XI the training courses are to be run free of charge (SGB XI); this point belongs visibly on the page and not in a footnote.
- Who may attend. The provision names relatives and other people interested in voluntary care work (SGB XI); neighbours and volunteers are covered as long as they have that interest.
- Sign-up route with a form and a phone number side by side. Someone searching at ten in the evening fills in the form; someone searching in the morning calls.
- One-to-one training at home as an alternative, if you offer it. Section 45 (1) SGB XI expressly provides for training in the home environment (SGB XI).
- A named contact with their role. A course page without a name reads like a notice board, one with a name reads like a commitment.
The date grid: a calendar beats running text
The month grid in the image above is deliberately plain: seven columns, five rows, four marked cells. It answers the question about the next date without a single sentence being read. What matters is that the marking does not rely on colour alone; a dot, an outline or the words course date in the cell make the grid usable for people who distinguish colours poorly. The overview below compares the usual formats. If you want the dates to be bookable anyway, the route is online appointment booking; the details are in online appointment booking for care consultations.
| Format | What relatives see | Typical result |
|---|---|---|
| Course dates in running text only | The date has to be read out of a paragraph | A phone call to ask, or no reaction at all |
| Course plan as a file to download | The file opens badly on a phone, screen readers stumble | Drop-off before the sign-up |
| Month grid with marked dates | The next date is grasped in seconds, without reading | A direct jump to the sign-up form |
| Grid plus sign-up column | Date, place, length and cost sit side by side | An enquiry with complete details |
| A phone number without any dates | No clue whether a course is running at all | A call only from highly motivated people |
The sign-up: short, low-barrier, data-minimal
To sign someone up for a free course you need the name, a way to reply, the preferred date and whether a companion is coming. Everything else, such as date of birth, health insurer, the care level of the person being cared for or a diagnosis, is not necessary at the moment of sign-up and only raises the drop-off rate. Data protection points the same way: collect what is needed to run the course, not what might be useful later. What such a form looks like in practice is described in data protection for forms and in the service data protection for care services. How long each entry is kept is a topic of its own; for applications it is covered by deleting applicant data: retention periods on the careers page, and the logic carries over to course sign-ups.
For a sign-up form, low-barrier mainly means three things: every field has a visible label, error messages appear as text next to the field and not only as a coloured outline, and the form can be completed entirely with the keyboard. Section 3 (1) of the German Accessibility Strengthening Act describes accessibility as being findable, accessible and usable in the customary manner, without particular difficulty and in principle without outside help (Accessibility Strengthening Act). For a course page that is not a special case but the normal case, because the audience is on average older than the average visitor. The approach is set out in implementing an accessible care website, and the service is accessibility for care services.
An exemption is not a free pass
Explaining cost and cost bearers clearly
The most frequent question on the phone is not when but what it costs. Answer it on the page before it is asked, and separate the course itself cleanly from the benefits that are discussed during the course. How a guide page about such a benefit generates enquiries is shown in the relief budget on guide pages. For the explanation on the course page, this order has proven itself:
- The course is free for participants; section 45 (1) SGB XI obliges the care funds to run it free of charge (SGB XI).
- The entitlement also exists at care level 1: section 28a SGB XI expressly counts care courses for relatives and voluntary carers among the benefits at care level 1 (SGB XI).
- The relief amount is something different. Under section 45b (1) SGB XI, people in need of care at home are entitled to up to 131 euros per month (SGB XI), earmarked for quality-assured relief services, not for a course fee.
- Everyday support offers under section 45a (1) SGB XI expressly include offers for the targeted relief and advisory support of caring relatives (SGB XI). Anyone running such offers links to them from the course page.
- The advisory visit is a separate appointment: section 37 (3) SGB XI obliges people at care levels 2 to 5 who receive care allowance to call up advice in their own home once every six months (SGB XI).
- Employees who step away at short notice are entitled, under the conditions of section 44a (3) SGB XI, to care support allowance for up to ten working days per calendar year (SGB XI).
The sentence that belongs on every course page
From a course place to an enquiry: what happens next
The course itself is not lead generation, and the page should not sound like it. The connection comes about differently: 3.1 million (Federal Statistical Office) people in need of care received care allowance only at the end of 2023 and were therefore looked after mainly by relatives; the number of people cared for mainly by relatives rose by 21 per cent (Federal Statistical Office), or 549,000 people, compared with the previous survey. No care service enters those homes. The course evening is often the first personal contact, and when the strain grows later, people remember the name they know.
For that contact to become an enquiry, the page needs a second exit alongside the sign-up: a calm pointer to advice and services, not a sales box. A short paragraph at the foot of the page works well, linking to our services and to contact, plus an optional field in the sign-up form for the wish to have an advisory conversation. Anyone who informs people regularly can add participants to a mailing list with their consent; how to do that cleanly is described in newsletters for relatives. Which figures matter along the way is covered by more enquiries through the care website.
A grid instead of a paragraph
Four marked cells in a month grid answer the most frequent question without any reading. The grid is rolled forward each quarter, not once a year.
Content per evening
One sentence per evening is enough: moving and positioning, personal hygiene, nutrition, relief. People who know the sequence sign up more readily.
Cost in plain sight
Free of charge under section 45 (1) SGB XI, visible above the form rather than in the footer of the page.
A form without hurdles
Visible labels, error messages as text, full keyboard operation. The audience is older than the average visitor.
One-to-one training at home
Section 45 (1) SGB XI provides for training in the home environment. Whoever offers it names it as a line of its own with its own sign-up route.
Two routes in parallel
Form and phone number side by side, both equally prominent. In the evening the form wins, in the morning the phone does.
Keeping the course page current
A course page with expired dates does more damage than no course page at all: it shows that the website is not maintained, and in case of doubt that impression carries over to the service. The effort stays manageable when it sits in the calendar and does not depend on someone remembering. These points belong in the routine:
- Enter the dates for the next quarter at the latest four weeks before the quarter starts, together with the roster planning.
- Remove expired dates rather than striking them through. A struck-through date remains a date on the page as far as search engines are concerned.
- Indicate free places roughly, as places available, few places or fully booked, and give that status a date.
- After each course, ask participants whether the place, the time and the length worked; the next set of dates comes out of that.
- Check the named contact whenever the roster changes. A name that is no longer in the house costs you the enquiry.
- Keep arrangements with the care funds in view; under section 45 (3) SGB XI the regional associations may agree uniform delivery and course content with the providers (SGB XI).
- Once a year, go through the page on a phone and deliberately read it with enlarged text.
Maintaining a course page takes, in our experience, a few minutes a month once the structure is in place. The benefit, by contrast, grows with demography: the projection published by the Federal Statistical Office in 2023, starting from the end of 2021, shows that the number of people in need of care could rise through ageing alone to 6.8 million (Federal Statistical Office) by the end of 2055; the measured development is already above that path, because in December 2023 the figure was almost 5.7 million (Federal Statistical Office). Whoever sets the page up now only has to keep it going later. How such a page is fitted into an existing care website is something we work out in conversation.
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