About Elderly Care Help
Who I am, why this site is independent, and the ten years of hands-on care experience behind the guidance.
Why this site exists
This is my mum, on one of our days out. Almost everything on this site comes from the years I spent looking after her at home, and most of it I learned the hard way.
When a loved one starts to need care, most families hit the same wall: the advice is either a sales pitch from a care company, or dense, formal guidance from an official body that is accurate but hard to act on. Neither is much help at 2am when you're worried and don't know where to start.
Elderly Care Help sits in the gap between the two. It is plain-English, warm and independent, and I explain what the councils, the NHS and the care companies actually mean, so you can make a calm, informed decision.
So this is really the guide I wish someone had handed me when it was my turn: the questions that kept me up at night, from the first worrying signs to the bills and the benefits, answered the way I needed them answered.
The experience behind the guidance
Elderly Care Help is written by Graham. It draws on ten years of hands-on care experience: caring for my own mum through the whole of her declining health, then working as a home carer for two UK care providers. I'm also ex-forces and platoon medic trained, so the medical side of caring was familiar ground.
I dealt first-hand with everything this site covers: medication, mobility, meals and personal care, and the hard money questions too, from self-funding and means testing to Attendance Allowance and dealing with councils.
I had this site built to give families the plain, simple guidance I couldn't find at the time.
The one thing I'd tell anyone starting out: question everything.
- Approximately ten years caring for my mum at home, start to finish
- Worked as a home carer for two UK care providers
- Ex-forces - platoon medic trained
- First-hand with the money side: self-funding, means testing, Attendance Allowance, councils
- Independent: not associated with any care provider
How I keep it trustworthy
This is health and money guidance, so I hold it to a high bar. Facts, figures and thresholds are traced to a named, current source. Where something changes yearly, I stamp the date it was last reviewed.
I am clear about the limits too. I cannot give personal financial or care advice for your situation. For that, speak to your council, an independent financial adviser who specialises in care, or a charity like Age UK.
You can read exactly how I work in my editorial policy.