For residents, carers and families in South West London

You should know exactly
what is happening
with your care.

Help with Care is for anyone living with a condition, and for the family, friends and neighbours who help them. Young or old, next door or two hundred miles away.

One complete view of your care journey shared with whoever you choose to include, and with every professional you need.
We work for you to get the best from health and social care services.

Register your interest See how it works
Mother and daughter looking at a tablet together at a kitchen table
For the person being cared for
For family, friends and neighbours who help
For young, elderly, disabled and vulnerable people
Starting in Kingston and South West London

Here is exactly what Help with Care does.

Help with Care contacts and coordinates. We connect your GP, your care providers, your family, and anyone else you need, so that they are all working from the same picture and talking to each other properly. We keep you informed at every step, so you are never left wondering what is happening or chasing someone for an answer.

You control your own decisions. Your care stays with you and your providers. What we change is the communication, so that it is faster, clearer, and no longer yours alone to hold together.

Three ways to use Help with Care

Talk to a person, use the app,
or walk in.

You choose how you deal with us, and you can change your mind. We don’t make you use a phone app or computer and you don’t need to be with the person you are caring for.

Residents chatting over coffee at a neighbourhood drop-in session
📞
Speak to our team
A real person answers and they open your record, so you don’t need to explain your situation from the beginning every time. Available by telephone to anyone, with no app, no login and no screen.
📱
Look after someone near or far
Use the app or your computer from wherever you are. Named family, friends and neighbours see the same record at the same time, whether they live two doors away or in another country. You do not have to be the one ringing round.
☕
Drop in for a coffee
Our neighbourhood centre is open to any resident or carer. No appointment, no device. Come in, have a coffee, and talk to somebody who understands what you are dealing with.
👥
Meet others in the same position
Sit with residents and carers who have faced similar problems and used the same systems. Peer experience is often the most useful guidance there is.
When Help with Care helps

Some familiar situations,
and what happens in each.

Help with Care is here for young and older people when they need care from more than one organisation, and for whoever is helping them.

A man at home on the telephone, sorting out his mother’s care from a hundred miles away
John 55 and Margaret 85
Looking after a parent who lives a long way away

John lives in London. His mother Margaret is 85 and lives on her own in Peterborough, a hundred miles away. John has two sisters, one twenty minutes from Margaret and one abroad. Between the three of them somebody speaks to Margaret most days, but no one has the whole picture, and the sister who lives nearest ends up doing the chasing.

What Help with Care does. Margaret has one care record that her GP, practice nurse and private podiatrist use to share information and work from. Her children are named on it and given the access Margaret chooses. When a hospital letter arrives or an appointment moves, everyone sees it at the same time. If a referral goes quiet, our coordinator follows it up, so it is not the nearest sister’s job.
AppHelpdesk
Older couple at their kitchen table, checking appointments on the wall calendar
Ken 79 and Barbara 77
A couple who are each other’s carer

Ken and Barbara have been married for fifty three years. Barbara’s memory has been getting worse for two years and Ken covers for her without quite admitting that he does. Ken has a heart condition and does all the driving. Each of them is on the other’s side of the arrangement, and neither of them has been asked whether they are coping. Their daughter lives an hour away and finds out afterwards.

What Help with Care does. Both have their own record, and each is named as the other’s carer, which is the first time anyone has written that down. Their daughter is named on both, with the access each of them agrees to. The memory clinic, the cardiology team and the GP can see the arrangement rather than treating two patients who happen to share an address. When Ken’s appointment clashes with Barbara’s, we notice, because we can see both.
CoordinatorBoth records linkedDrop in
Teenage girl and her mother working through something together on a laptop
Priya 41 and Amara 17
A young person moving from children’s services to adult services

Amara is 17, has epilepsy and type 1 diabetes, and is in her second year of sixth form. She has been under the same paediatric team since she was small. At 18 she moves to adult services, which means a new consultant, a new diabetes team and a new set of appointments, and the transition is being arranged by several people who are not talking to each other. Priya has kept a folder for eleven years.

What Help with Care does. The record moves with Amara. Both teams work from it during the handover, so nothing has to be recounted from the beginning. As Amara turns 18 the record becomes hers, but she can still include her mother to help. Our coordinator tracks each part of the transfer and tells Priya what is still outstanding, rather than Priya finding out when an appointment does not arrive.
AppCoordinator

These are composite situations. Names and details are invented and no real person is described.

On the next page see how more people need care and how we can care for them, including a neighbour looking after the couple next door, a man who cannot use a screen, and a woman managing a long term condition alongside a full time job →

What Help with Care makes possible

This is what care with us can feel like.

We know that today, care coordination often falls on the people who need care most. Help with Care is being built to change that, so that the things listed below are simply what you can expect.

Tell your story once
Every professional you invite sees the same record. One shared picture of your care, updated as things change.
Keep your carer close
Invite a family member or friend into your care plan. They stay informed wherever they are, without you having to pass on every update.
Every referral followed through
When your GP refers you on, you can see that it has arrived and what happens next. Nothing disappears into a system you cannot see.
Your information, your rules
You choose who is part of your care picture. You can add or remove people at any time. Your record belongs to you.
Seamless care wherever you are
Moving from hospital to home. Changing provider. Starting with someone new. Your record travels with you.
Support from someone who knows you
When you call our helpdesk, the coordinator already knows your situation. You pick up where you left off, not from the beginning.
How we fit with the NHS

Neighbourhood health teams join up the services.
We join up around you.

The NHS 10-year plan is building neighbourhood health teams across England, and that is a good thing. Those teams join up the organisations inside one area. We do something different and complementary: we join up around one person. Care crosses a boundary in three quite separate ways, and they are not the same problem.

✓
The people helping you are somewhere else
You stay where you are. Your son is in London, your daughter is abroad, the neighbour who looks in lives two doors away. Everyone you name sees the same record and can act on it from wherever they are. They do not have to be in the room.
✓
You move, or you travel
Into hospital and home again. A month staying with family. A new address, or a new provider. Your record belongs to you, so it goes where you go and you do not start again.
✓
You stay put, and the services around you do not line up
Your GP, your hospital, your council’s care team and your day centre can sit in different areas and answer to different organisations. You notice it when one tells you to ring another, or when something stalls while two of them work out whose job it is. The hold-up is rarely medical. It is paperwork, and the chasing is ours, not yours.

You never need a referral to reach us, you decide who is on your record, and we connect you to what already exists and fill the gaps where it does not. We work for the people, not the organisations.

The standard you should expect

What to ask your own GP,
care provider or council.

These are five things you are entitled to expect from anyone involved in your care. They are what Help with Care makes possible, and they are reasonable to ask for whether or not your provider is with us yet.

1
Every professional involved in my care shares one record
One shared view, updated as things change, visible to the people I have chosen to include.
2
My referrals are tracked and confirmed
I am told when a referral has been sent, when it has been received, and what happens next.
3
My carer is treated as part of the team
A named participant in the care plan, who receives the same information I do.
4
My care continues across organisational boundaries
The record follows me. The coordination does not start again from scratch.
5
I can get help without a device
By telephone, or by walking in. Nothing about my care depends on my being able to use a screen.

Ask your provider whether they can do these five things. If you would like them to and they want to join in, send them to us.

Be the first to know when Help with Care launches near you.

We are building our pilot in Kingston and South West London. Register your interest and we will contact you when we are ready to take on residents, carers, or organisations in your neighbourhood.

Are you a GP, allied health professional, care provider, council or community organisation? Help with Care gives you the coordination layer between you and everyone else around the same resident.

For providers → For councils and commissioners →