Care advice and guides

Plain-English guides on choosing care, paying for it and understanding the people and processes involved, written for families in England.

• Falls Prevention Teams, Explained in Plain English — The latest post in our Jargon Buster series covers one of the most important specialist services in elderly care and one that most families have never heard of:
• Community Matrons, Explained in Plain English — If your relative has multiple long-term conditions, has been in and out of hospital more than once in the last year, is living with frailty, has advanced heart
• Early Signs of Dementia: What to Look For (and What to Do Next) — Worried about a parent's memory? A calm, practical guide to the early signs of dementia, how they differ from normal ageing, and the steps to take if you are co
• Continuing Healthcare (CHC) Assessors, Explained in Plain English — If your relative is being considered for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), you will encounter a group of professionals whose job is to decide whether the NHS wil
• Hospital Discharge Assessors, Explained in Plain English — If your relative has been admitted to hospital, one of the most important conversations you will have in the next few days is about how, when, and to where they
• Local NHS Community Teams, Explained in Plain English — If your relative has been seen at home by a district nurse, visited by a community matron after a hospital discharge, referred to a community physiotherapy team
• Mental Health Nurses, Explained in Plain English — If your relative has dementia with distressing behavioural changes, is depressed following a bereavement, is experiencing paranoia or hallucinations,
• Community Pharmacists, Explained in Plain English — Community pharmacists are one of the most accessible and most underestimated healthcare professionals in the UK. They are qualified clinicians, trained for five
• Podiatrists and Chiropodists, Explained in Plain English — If your relative is elderly, has diabetes, is diabetic and recently developed a foot problem, has neuropathy, is losing mobility because their feet hurt, or sim
• Dietitian's, Explained in Plain English — If your relative has been losing weight, refusing meals, developing pressure sores, drinking less than they should, managing diabetes, recovering from a stroke,
• Speech and Language Therapists (SLT/SALT), Explained in Plain English — Speech and language therapists: what they do, why they matter in elderly care, and how to access them.
• Palliative Care and End of Life Care Teams, Explained in Plain English — Palliative care and end of life care: what they actually mean, who is on the team, how the two differ, and how to make sure your relative gets the right support
• Occupational Therapists (OTs), Explained in Plain English — Occupational Therapists: what they do, how they assess, and how to make sure your relative gets the right support.
• Dementia Care Specialists, Explained in Plain English — Dementia care specialists: who they are, where to find them, and how to make sure your relative gets the specialist support that genuinely exists.
• Enhanced Health in Care Homes (EHCH), Explained in Plain English — The Enhanced Health in Care Homes framework: what it is, what the seven core elements are, and what families and care providers should expect from it in 2026.
• Physiotherapists, Explained in Plain English — Physiotherapists: what they do, how to access them in 2026, and how to make sure your relative gets the right support.
• GPs (General Practitioners), Explained in Plain English — What a GP actually does for an elderly relative, how the new 2026 GP contract changes things, and how access works in a care home, a nursing home, or at home.
• Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), Explained in Plain English — Allied Health Professionals: who they are, what they do for your relative, and how to make sure your relative is getting the right support.
• Multidisciplinary Team (MDT), Explained in Plain English — The Multidisciplinary Team: what it is, who is on it, and how to get the most out of it.
• Attendance Allowance (AA), Explained in Plain English — Attendance Allowance puts real money in the pockets of older people who need help with daily life. It is not means-tested, and hundreds of thousands of people w
• The Integrated Care Board (ICB), Explained in Plain English — NHS body that holds your local healthcare budget, runs your CHC decisions, and is currently in the middle of the biggest restructure since it was set up
• What Is Respite Care? — Behind every person needing long-term care, there is usually someone else doing most of the looking after. A husband, a wife, an adult son or daughter, a siblin
• What Is Home Care? A Plain English Guide for Families — For most older people, the strongest preference is straightforward: they would like to stay in their own home for as long as possible. That single fact is the r
• What Is a Nursing Home? A Plain English Guide for Families — A nursing home looks, on the surface, very much like a care home. The bedrooms, the lounges, the gardens, the activities, the rhythm of the day, all of these ca
• What Is a Care Home? A Plain English Guide for Families — For most of us, the moment we start seriously looking at care homes is also the moment we realise how little we actually know about them.
• The Decision Support Tool (DST), Explained in Plain English — The is the part of our Jargon Buster series goes inside the single most important document in the NHS Continuing Healthcare process. What the Decision Support T
• Deliberate Deprivation of Assets, Explained in Plain English — The line between sensible financial planning and an act the council can punish. Everything you need to know about deliberate deprivation of assets, in language
• The Deferred Payment Agreement (DPA), Explained in Plain English — The Deferred Payment Agreement: what it is, what it costs, and whether it is the right move for your family.
• The Care Quality Commission (CQC), Explained in Plain English — The Care Quality Commission, the CQC, is not a funding scheme. But understanding it is just as important when you are arranging care, because it is the single b
• The Independent Review Panel (IRP), Explained in Plain English — If you search "Independent Review Panel," you'll get a lot of results about school exclusions; that's a different IRP entirely. This post is about the Independe
• The £86,000 Care Cost Cap, Explained in Plain English — Here is the honest picture of the £86,000 cap: what it was, what happened to it, and what it means for your family right now.
• The 12 Week Property Disregard, Explained in Plain English — For a lot of families, the most frightening moment in the whole care journey is the realisation that a parent's house might have to be sold to pay for their car
• NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), Explained in Plain English — In this part of our Jargon Buster series tackles the biggest, most misunderstood, and most contested source of NHS care funding, and the one most likely to be l
• Funded Nursing Care (FNC), Explained in Plain English — Care funding shouldn't feel like a foreign language. This is the first in our Jargon Buster series, sitting alongside our funding calculator to help you underst
• The CHC Assessment, Explained in Plain English — This is part of our Jargon Buster series goes inside the room where CHC decisions get made, the meetings, the paperwork, the scoring, and exactly what to do (an
• Residential Care Homes: Costs, Eligibility, Types and How to Choose the Right Care Home — Deciding to go into a residential care home for yourself, your parents, partner, or close friend can be daunting. Aside from the emotional aspects, there are qu
• UK Care Home Funding Explained: Who Pays What in 2025/26 — Working out how to pay for residential or nursing care is one of the most stressful financial puzzles families face. The system is genuinely complicated, the ru