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About this site

Who runs Get Care Now, and why

Get Care Now is a free guide to what care at home costs anywhere in the UK, and to whether the council will help pay, with detailed local guides for Teesside and Darlington, where it’s made. It’s run by registered care managers who also provide care, we never sell your details, and this page explains how it works and how we make our money.

The people behind it

We’re a small team of registered care managers based in Stockton-on-Tees. Between us we’ve spent years running CQC-registered home care, sitting through needs assessments with families and going back and forth with councils over financial assessments.

We built this site after too many first conversations with families who had no idea what care would cost, didn’t know a needs assessment was free, and had never heard of Attendance Allowance. The same questions came up every week, so we put the answers, and the real local prices, in one place.

How we make the figures

• Costs come from the average prices published by home care agencies in each council area (we use the homecare.co.uk area listings), plus the rates our own care team charges. Where we don’t yet have a local average, the calculator uses the national range adjusted for your region.
• Who pays follows the England means-test rules set by the Department of Health and Social Care for 2026/27: the £23,250 and £14,250 capital limits, £1 a week of “tariff income” for every £250 in between, and the Minimum Income Guarantee of £241.45 a week for a single person over State Pension age.
• Benefit rates are the 2026/27 figures from GOV.UK.
• Council details, phone numbers, teams, what each council charges for and what it provides free, are taken from each council’s own website.

Every figure was last checked on 27 October 2026. We re-check them at least every three months and whenever the new rates come in each April, and the date on each page tells you when that last happened. If you spot something that’s changed, tell us and we’ll fix it.

How we’re funded, and what we do with your details

The calculator and guides are free and always will be. There are no adverts on this site, and we don’t sell or pass on enquiries to other companies. The cost estimate needs no details from you; if you ask for your funding result and written report, the name, email, phone number and postcode you give us come to our office with your estimate, and we use them only to send the report and, if you want help, to follow up once.

If you enter a Teesside or Darlington postcode, the results recommend our own care team. That’s how the site pays for itself: some of the people who use it go on to choose us. You are under no obligation to, the council’s needs assessment and financial assessment are independent of us, and every guide lists the other free local help that’s available. Elsewhere in the UK we don’t recommend a provider; the calculator and guides are simply there to use.

If you send an enquiry, it comes to our office team in Stockton, wherever you are. We use it to get back to you and, if you came from one of our Google adverts, to record which advert and search brought you here, so we can tell which adverts genuinely help families. If you accept the advertising cookie, we may also tell Google the advert’s click reference, the date, and whether the enquiry went on to become care, so our adverts reach the right families; never your name, contact details or anything about your care. We keep click references for no more than 90 days, and we may try up to three times to reach you about your enquiry. Google may also record calls made from our adverts (the time and length, not what is said). You can change your cookie choice at any time with the “Cookie settings” link at the foot of each page. The “ask a question” assistant on the site is an AI tool that answers from the same figures and rules as these pages; it gives general guidance, not advice, and we don’t store what you type into it.

About the care service