The short answer
- Two routes, and the difference is the workAdvertise the job and check the replies yourself, or use a service that has checked the carers already. The care is the same either way. What changes is who carries the checking, the contract and the cover when your carer is ill.
- The DBS rules changed in January 2026Self-employed carers can now hold an enhanced DBS check with the adult barred list in their own name. If you hire somebody directly you still cannot order the check for them, so ask to see the certificate they hold.
- Write the advert around the week, not the personCarers answer the adverts that tell them the days, the hours, the tasks and the budget. A vague advert brings vague replies and a long evening of sifting.
- Expect £16 to £25 an hourCarers found through an introductory service charge £18 to £25 with the fee included, typically about £20. Finding somebody entirely on your own is a few pounds an hour cheaper. An agency is £28 to £35.
Figures are what families pay carers on PrimeCarers, with our fee included, and what agencies quote for the same visit. Prices are August 2026.
Where to look
The five places families look for a private carer
Every one of them will get you names. Where they differ is how much of the checking, the paperwork and the holiday cover is left sitting with you, and that is worth deciding before you start rather than halfway through.
An introductory service
Search carers near you by postcode and read their rates, experience and reviews before you speak to anybody. The checks are already done and the contract is written.
PrimeCarers, Curam, Elder, Guardian Carers, Country Cousins
A care job board
You write the advert and carers reply to it. The audience is right, so the replies are usually from people who do this for a living.
PA Pool, Care.com
Classified ad sites
A general marketplace, so the advert is cheap and a lot of people see it. Most of the replies will not be from carers, and sifting them takes an evening or two.
Gumtree, Preloved
Local Facebook groups and Nextdoor
Carers living near you see the post and often reply the same day. It works best for live-in and for longer placements, because carers will travel further for those.
Carer job groups, town and village pages
Word of mouth and the local paper
Ask at the GP surgery, the pharmacy, the day centre and among other families. A small ad in the local paper still reaches experienced carers who are not looking online.
Your surgery, other families, the local paper
An introductory service
Search carers near you by postcode and read their rates, experience and reviews before you speak to anybody. The checks are already done and the contract is written.
PrimeCarers, Curam, Elder, Guardian Carers, Country Cousins
- Finding carers
- Done for you
- DBS and ID checks
- Done for you
- Contract and insurance
- Done for you
- Cover for holidays and illness
- Partly
- What carers charge an hour
- £18–25
A care job board
You write the advert and carers reply to it. The audience is right, so the replies are usually from people who do this for a living.
PA Pool, Care.com
- Finding carers
- Partly
- DBS and ID checks
- Yours to do
- Contract and insurance
- Yours to do
- Cover for holidays and illness
- Yours to do
- What carers charge an hour
- £16–18
Classified ad sites
A general marketplace, so the advert is cheap and a lot of people see it. Most of the replies will not be from carers, and sifting them takes an evening or two.
Gumtree, Preloved
- Finding carers
- Partly
- DBS and ID checks
- Yours to do
- Contract and insurance
- Yours to do
- Cover for holidays and illness
- Yours to do
- What carers charge an hour
- £16–18
Local Facebook groups and Nextdoor
Carers living near you see the post and often reply the same day. It works best for live-in and for longer placements, because carers will travel further for those.
Carer job groups, town and village pages
- Finding carers
- Partly
- DBS and ID checks
- Yours to do
- Contract and insurance
- Yours to do
- Cover for holidays and illness
- Yours to do
- What carers charge an hour
- £16–18
Word of mouth and the local paper
Ask at the GP surgery, the pharmacy, the day centre and among other families. A small ad in the local paper still reaches experienced carers who are not looking online.
Your surgery, other families, the local paper
- Finding carers
- Yours to do
- DBS and ID checks
- Yours to do
- Contract and insurance
- Yours to do
- Cover for holidays and illness
- Yours to do
- What carers charge an hour
- £16–18
Rates on PrimeCarers include our fee, so the figure is what you pay. The other four rows are what carers charge families directly, before the cost of the advert, which runs from nothing to about £20. Whichever route you use, a carer’s skills and training are for you to ask about; no service checks those for you.
There is no right answer in that table. A daughter with a fortnight of annual leave and some patience will find a good carer through a local Facebook group and pay less an hour for years afterwards. A family whose father is being discharged on Friday has neither the fortnight nor the patience, and the checking matters more to them than the two pounds an hour. Most people we speak to have already tried one of the free routes, found the replies hard to judge, and come looking for something that has done the checks.
The one route missing from the table is a home care agency. An agency employs its carers and sends whoever is on the rota, so you are not choosing a person, and it costs £28 to £35 an hour. It is the right answer for some families, particularly where needs are clinical and change week to week, and the comparison is set out properly on that page.
The sites themselves
What each route is like in practice
Named sites change over the years, so treat these as the kinds of place to look rather than a shortlist. What does not change is what each one leaves you to do.
Introductory services
PrimeCarers, Curam, Elder, Guardian Carers, Country Cousins
Care job boards
PA Pool, Care.com
Classified ad sites
Gumtree, Preloved
Local Facebook groups and Nextdoor
Carer job groups, town and village pages
Word of mouth and the local paper
Your surgery, other families, a small ad
Writing the advert
What to put in the advert
If you are posting the job yourself, the advert decides who replies. Carers are usually choosing between several jobs at once, and they answer the ones that tell them whether the work fits the week they already have.
Does your advert answer all of this?
0 of 14 ticked
The week
The person and the tasks
The practical side
That is about a hundred words and it answers everything a carer needs to know before replying. Anything longer tends to go unread, and anything shorter brings you twenty messages asking the same four questions.
Before anyone starts
The five checks to make before anyone starts
Nothing here is legally required when you hire a carer privately, which surprises most families. Nobody inspects the arrangement and nobody signs it off. That means it is your decision what you are satisfied with, so it helps to know what to ask for and what a good answer looks like.
| What to ask for | What a good answer looks like | |
|---|---|---|
| Enhanced DBS | The certificate itself, plus the certificate number so you can check it is still current | An enhanced certificate that includes the adult barred list, issued in the last twelve months, or an older one the carer keeps live on the DBS Update Service |
| Photo ID | A passport or driving licence, seen in person or on video, not a photograph sent by message | The name and date of birth match the DBS certificate exactly. A mismatch is worth asking about before anything else |
| Right to work | A share code, or a passport if they are British or Irish | The Home Office online service confirms it from the share code in about a minute. British and Irish citizens cannot get a share code, so their passport is the document |
| Insurance | A current public liability and professional indemnity certificate in the carer’s own name | Cover in date and in the millions, from an insurer that names care work. Self-employed carers buy this themselves and most experienced ones already have it |
| Training and experience | Certificates for moving and handling, medication and anything specific to your relative, and two people who have used them before | Dated certificates they can show you, and referees who will take a phone call. Nobody verifies training for you on any route, so this one is always yours |
Enhanced DBS
- What to ask for
- The certificate itself, plus the certificate number so you can check it is still current
- What a good answer looks like
- An enhanced certificate that includes the adult barred list, issued in the last twelve months, or an older one the carer keeps live on the DBS Update Service
Photo ID
- What to ask for
- A passport or driving licence, seen in person or on video, not a photograph sent by message
- What a good answer looks like
- The name and date of birth match the DBS certificate exactly. A mismatch is worth asking about before anything else
Right to work
- What to ask for
- A share code, or a passport if they are British or Irish
- What a good answer looks like
- The Home Office online service confirms it from the share code in about a minute. British and Irish citizens cannot get a share code, so their passport is the document
Insurance
- What to ask for
- A current public liability and professional indemnity certificate in the carer’s own name
- What a good answer looks like
- Cover in date and in the millions, from an insurer that names care work. Self-employed carers buy this themselves and most experienced ones already have it
Training and experience
- What to ask for
- Certificates for moving and handling, medication and anything specific to your relative, and two people who have used them before
- What a good answer looks like
- Dated certificates they can show you, and referees who will take a phone call. Nobody verifies training for you on any route, so this one is always yours
A carer who has done this for years will have all five ready and will not mind being asked. Hesitation about the DBS certificate is the answer to pay attention to.
Two things sit outside the five. A self-employed carer you have chosen and booked directly does not need to be registered with the CQC, and neither does the service that introduced them; the CQC regulates providers that employ carers and manage the care themselves. Separately, if you set the hours, direct how the work is done and provide the equipment, HMRC may treat the carer as your employee rather than as self-employed, which brings PAYE, holiday pay and pension duties with it. Can I employ a private carer? sets out where that line falls, and the legal and financial side covers the paperwork if you decide to employ somebody properly.
If you would rather not run the checks at all, that is the main thing you are paying for on PrimeCarers: how we check carers covers the enhanced DBS, the identity and right-to-work checks and the online interview every carer goes through before their profile appears, along with continuous DBS monitoring for as long as they work. Skills and training are still for you to ask about.
Meeting them
What to ask, and what should give you pause
Most families decide on the phone call rather than from the profile or the CV. Half an hour on a video call, or a cup of tea in the kitchen, tells you more than any document will. Ask about the part of the day you are most worried about and listen for whether they have done it before.
Questions worth asking
- Talk me through how you would handle a morning with my mother, from arriving to leaving
- What would you do if she refused to get washed?
- Who have you cared for with dementia, and what was hard about it?
- What do you do if somebody has fallen and you cannot lift them?
- Which of these tasks would you rather not do?
- What happens when you are ill or on holiday, and how much notice do you give?
Answers that should give you pause
- Vagueness about the enhanced DBS certificate, or an offer to bring it later
- No insurance, and no interest in getting any
- Cash only, no invoices and no record of the hours worked
- Willingness to do anything at all, including clinical tasks they have never been trained for
- No questions back about your relative, which usually means they have not pictured the job
- Pressure to decide today, or to pay anything up front
Have somebody else there if you can, and let your relative meet them properly rather than being introduced afterwards. They are the one who will be washed and dressed by this person. If the two of them do not take to each other, keep looking, whatever the certificates say. Our fuller guides are how to interview a private carer and what to look for when you choose.
What it costs
The price of each route
The route you choose moves the hourly rate by a few pounds. It moves the amount of work you do by a great deal more than that.
- Found yourself£16–18
- PrimeCarers£18–25
- Care agency£28–35
PrimeCarers rates for August 2026, with our fee already in the price. Agency figures are what agencies quote for the same visit.
Nights and live-in care follow the same pattern. On PrimeCarers a night is £130 to £160 depending on whether the carer sleeps, and live-in care starts at £1,050 a week and typically comes to £1,120. What a private carer costs per hour has the full breakdown, and the cost of care sets the different kinds of care side by side.
Getting started
From this page to the first visit
Four steps, and the first two cost nothing. Most families have somebody in place within a week or two.
- 1
Write down the week
Half an hourThe days, the times, the tasks and what you can pay. This is your advert if you are posting one, your message if you are contacting carers, and it becomes the care plan either way. If nobody has assessed your relative yet, ask the council for a care needs assessment at the same time; it is free and it may bring funding with it. - 2
Look at who is near you
FreeSearch carers by postcode and read their rates, experience, availability and reviews before you speak to anybody. Nothing to sign up for, and nobody is contacted until you decide to message them. - 3
Talk to two or three
This weekSend the week you wrote down and ask about the mornings you are worried about. Meet the ones you like, in person or on video, and have your relative there. Interviewing carers is free and there is no obligation to book any of them. - 4
Book a first week, then adjust
Week oneStart with the part you are sure of, an hour every morning for example, and add to it once the carer has seen how the days go. Hourly care runs on 48 hours’ notice, so nothing here is a long commitment.
Questions
Questions families ask about finding a carer
It depends on how much of the work you want to do. Introductory services such as PrimeCarers, Curam, Elder, Guardian Carers and Country Cousins let you search carers near you who have already had identity, right-to-work and enhanced DBS checks, and they provide the contract and the insurance. Care job boards such as PA Pool and Care.com are cheaper and put your advert in front of carers, but the checking, the contract and the holiday cover are yours. Local Facebook groups are free and often the fastest, with nothing done for you at all.
Search by postcode on an introductory service and you will see carers who cover your area, with their rates, experience and reviews. If you would rather advertise, post the job on a care job board or in a local Facebook group with the days, the hours, the tasks and the rate you can pay. Either way, expect to speak to two or three people before you choose. See carers near you.
Yes, usually by a good margin. Carers on PrimeCarers charge £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included, typically about £20. Agencies charge £28 to £35 for the same visit, because they employ their carers and carry the overheads of doing so. Finding and checking somebody entirely yourself is cheaper again, at around £16 to £18. The three routes compared.
There is no law requiring one when you hire privately, but you should not use a carer who does not have an enhanced DBS certificate with the adult barred list. Since 21 January 2026 self-employed carers can apply for one in their own name through a registered umbrella body, so there is no longer any reason for an experienced carer to be without it. More on DBS checks for private carers.
No. If you are hiring a self-employed carer, or employing somebody directly in your own home, you cannot request a DBS check on them. They apply for it themselves and you check the certificate. If they are registered with the DBS Update Service you can confirm online, free, that the certificate is still clear, with their permission and their certificate details.
Not if they are self-employed, which most private carers are. You agree the visits with them and pay for the care you had, with no PAYE, holiday pay or pension duties. It changes if you set their hours, direct how they work and provide the equipment, because HMRC may then treat them as your employee. Where that line falls.
Through an introductory service, most families message carers on the first evening, speak to two or three within a few days and have a first visit inside a week or two. Advertising the job yourself takes longer, usually two to four weeks, because you are waiting for replies, reading them, checking certificates and writing a contract. If it is urgent, say so in the advert and in your first message; carers with free hours reply to those first.
This is the question families forget to ask and the one that causes the most trouble later. Agree it before the first visit: how much notice a carer will give for a holiday, and what happens on a morning they wake up unwell. If you found the carer yourself you will need a second carer you can call. On PrimeCarers you can search for cover and we will help you find somebody, and the respite care guide covers longer gaps.