Many families in Greenwich arrive at the same moment from completely different directions. One has just had a phone call from the hospital saying their relative cannot go home alone. Another has been watching things slip for six months, quietly managing, until something happened that made managing impossible. And another has been doing everything themselves, quietly, until their own health started cracking under the weight of it.

Whatever brought you here, the question you are facing is the same one: what kind of help does my relative actually need, and where on earth do I find it?

That question deserves a straight answer, not a brochure. So here is how the landscape actually looks in Greenwich, borough by borough detail, with the honest version of what each option involves.

What the council can and cannot do

The Royal Borough of Greenwich has an adult social care team. If your relative has care needs that have not yet been formally assessed, the right first step is to request a needs assessment through the council. You can do this online via the Royal Borough of Greenwich website, or by calling their adult social care duty line. It is free, it is a right under the Care Act 2014, and it does not commit you to anything.

If your relative is assessed as having eligible needs, the council may arrange care, contribute to the cost, or offer a direct payment. A direct payment is money paid directly to your relative (or to you as their representative) so you can arrange care yourselves rather than having it assigned by the council. For families who want more control over who comes through the door, direct payments can be a genuinely useful route. Citizens Advice has a clear, jargon-free guide to how direct payments work in practice, and the Carers UK Helpline on 0808 808 7777 can help you think through whether it makes sense for your situation.

The honest caveat: local authority budgets are stretched, waiting times for assessments can be long, and what the council can fund is means-tested and capped. Families who need care to start faster than the council timeline allows, or who need more hours than the council will fund, often end up looking at private options alongside or instead of council-arranged care.

NHS Continuing Healthcare: the path most families miss

If your relative has a primary health need, not just social care needs, they may be eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare. This is fully funded by the NHS and is not means-tested. It is, as a result, the funding route most families wish they had known about earlier. Eligibility is assessed by a multidisciplinary NHS team. The threshold is high, and the process can take time, but if your relative has complex medical needs, it is worth raising with their GP or hospital discharge team before you commit to paying privately. The NHS website explains the eligibility criteria clearly.

Private care: the three shapes it tends to take

If you are funding care privately, whether because the council contribution does not cover enough hours or because you want to move faster or have more choice, you will typically encounter three types of arrangement.

The first is a regulated domiciliary care agency. These are businesses that employ carers directly, coordinate rotas, and are registered with the Care Quality Commission. The CQC inspects them and publishes ratings. The trade-off is that you rarely have a say in which specific carer comes, and you may see several different people over the course of a week. Skills for Care data consistently shows that staff turnover in the domiciliary care sector is high, which means continuity is the thing families most often lose.

The second is finding a carer privately through an online listing. This gives you more control but puts all the vetting work on you: checking DBS certificates, verifying insurance, taking references, writing a contract. It is manageable, but it takes time and knowledge that most families are not sitting on when they first need it.

The third is an introductory care agency. This sits between those two shapes. The agency does the vetting work, checks the carer's DBS and insurance, and takes references, but then introduces the carer directly to your family. You choose the person yourself, you meet them before any arrangement begins, and the ongoing relationship is directly between your relative and that carer. There is no coordinating layer that breaks down on a Tuesday morning. The carer keeps the substantial part of what you pay. At Hibant we work on exactly this model, and we are London-based, so Greenwich families are very much within our area.

What good care actually looks like, in any arrangement

Whatever route you take, the shape of care that tends to work is this: one consistent person, chosen by your family, who has been vetted independently before they step through the door, and with whom you have a direct relationship so that if something changes, there is one clear conversation to have. That is not a luxury specification. It is what makes care sustainable for your relative and manageable for you.

What families in this situation most often tell us they wish they had known sooner is that the vetting step, checking the DBS, verifying the insurance, calling references, is not something you need to do alone or skip in a hurry. It is worth doing properly, and there are routes that do it for you.

One thing to do this week

If your relative has not had a needs assessment yet, requesting one from the Royal Borough of Greenwich adult social care team is the single most useful first step. It costs nothing, it takes no commitment, and it tells you what the council believes your relative needs, which is useful information whatever you decide to do next. If you are already past that stage and trying to figure out the private options, the Carers UK Helpline on 0808 808 7777 is staffed by people who know the system and have no commercial stake in what you decide.

If you are looking at introductory care specifically and would rather not do the vetting work yourself, this is exactly the kind of situation we exist for. We are a London introductory care agency. Every carer we work with has been DBS-checked, insurance-verified, and reference-checked before we make any introduction. You meet the carer in person before anything is agreed, and you choose who you want. The arrangement is direct between your family and the carer, which means consistency is built in rather than hoped for. If you want to talk through your relative's situation with us, you can email hello@hibantcare.com or take a look at hibantcare.com.

Hibant

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