Carers Week – UK startups transforming care

It’s Carers Week and this year’s theme is Making Caring Visible. To celebrate, we wanted to make some of the UK’s most exciting care startups more visible.

It’s an area ripe for innovation. Did you know:

• There are an estimated 13.6 million unpaid carers in the UK today, with 4.5 million of those having to start because of COVID-19 (Carers Week).
• 1 in 7 employees are carers, and 1 in 5 will leave their job because of their caring responsibilities.
• There are around 500,000 people in the UK in a care home, receiving full-time care. Those people are spending a staggering £22bn a year — one of the biggest markets in the UK.
• There are 12 million people over the age of 65 in the UK, and that’s rising year-on-year. The 85+ age group is the fastest growing, set to double by 2041 and treble by 2066 (AgeUK).

Below we’ve highlighted just some of the startups taking on these problems. Mobilise and Curo are early stage and focused on helping the millions of unpaid carers, while Birdie, Lifted, Bellevie, Elder and SuperCarers all help families coordinate paid care workers.

Touco

We had to start by talking about what we’re doing at Touco. If you didn’t know, we’re helping unpaid carers make payments safely on their loved one’s behalf, or keep an eye on their finances to make sure they’re safe from scams.

We were founded in 2018, and have been funded through grant support and, most recently, as part of the Barclays Techstars accelerator.

Mobilise

The team at Mobilise provide 1:1 and peer-led coaching and support for carers, with the aim that no-one will have to learn to be a carer alone. The team are all carers themselves, so they understand what it’s like to need help but not know where to turn.

Their virtual ‘cuppas’ have been an invaluable support circle for carers during the lockdown, and their e-support package features helpful resources and stories delivered by email.

Mobilise is working with local authorities to extend help to carers while working to build out an app.

James Townsend started Mobilise over a year ago while a part of the Zinc incubator, which helps founders start businesses that solve societal problems.

Curo

Curo is a new startup focused on helping employers offer better support for the one in seven in their workforce who care for a loved one.

Their packages of support can be bought by an employer to distribute as an employee benefit, with an option for employees to speak to experts such as doctors and legal advisors through the platform.

In return, employers will be able to retain staff who might otherwise have to leave their jobs or cut their hours due to caring responsibilities.

Founded only recently, the Curo team came out of Year Here, a programme that helps entrepreneurs build solutions to society’s problems.

Birdie

Birdie’s app helps carers, families and health practitioners to share notes on the person they’re caring for to coordinate the best possible support. Since 2017 their mission has been all about keeping older people in their own homes for as long as possible.

Birdie’s customers are the carer agencies that use the app across their workforce. With this improved technology agencies can improve efficiency as well as visibility for the family members of those they care for.

Birdie was founded in 2017 and has raised over £6m in funding.

Lifted

Lifted is a new type of home care agency, one where the carers are employed directly on Living Wage and the team builds technology to coordinate care in-house. Families can use the Lifted app to keep on top of what’s happening for their loved one.

Lifted CEO Rachael Crook co-founded the business in 2019 coming out of Zero 1, a corporate venture studio focused on starting impact-led companies. Last year she was able to raise £1.5m in seed funding.

Bellevie

Like Lifted, Bellevie is a new kind of home care agency that hires their carers directly, on a Living wage. The team uses Birdie’s software to coordinate care and are innovating in different ways, building self-organised care teams in Oxfordshire, where they are growing their base.

Founded in 2018, the team is headed up by Trudie Fell and Violaine Pierre, who, like the Mobilise team, met in Zinc’s incubator.

Elder

Instead of hiring carers themselves, Elder is an introductory agency that matches families with appropriate live-in support for their relatives. By working as an introductory agency for self-employed carers, Elder works differently to Bellevie and Lifted, avoiding the need to become CQC regulated.

Elder was started in 2016 by CEO Pete Dowds and now has a team of around 80, with 3,000 carers across the UK. The team have raised about £9m in venture capital funding.

SuperCarers

Like Elder, SuperCarers is an introductory agency. It removes the friction involved when families need to hire a self-employed home carer, vetting the carers featured on the platform. By cutting out the middleman, they claim to help cut costs for their users while at the same time paying more to carers.

SuperCarers was started by brothers Adam and Daniel Pike in 2014, motivated by their own experience of care when helping their grandmother. They’ve since raised around £5m to fund their journey.

Are there startups that aren’t on our radar doing brilliant things to transform care? Let us know in the comments, or on Facebook or Twitter.