The short answer
- A visit your carer cannot work is not one you pay forThe contract makes a visit payable in full when the client is the one cancelling, and even then illness is an exception. A visit the carer cannot do is not invoiced.
- Your carer may send a substitute, and you can object to oneA carer has the right to send a suitably qualified substitute, and arranges and pays that person themselves. You can turn one down for a sound reason, such as the care needs you agreed.
- Cover is quickest when a second carer already knows the houseSomebody who has done the occasional visit and read the care plan can start the same day. Starting from nobody takes a day or two.
- Ring the council if there is nobody and your relative is not safe aloneA council may meet needs that appear urgent before it has assessed anybody, and adult social care teams keep an out-of-hours number.
PrimeCarers is an introductory service, not a care agency, and holds no CQC registration. Carers are self-employed, so cover is agreed between you and a carer rather than provided by us.
Five ways to cover
The five places cover comes from
When a carer cannot come, the cover has to come from somewhere, and there are five places it comes from. They are set out in the order of how quickly each tends to work, so you can start at the top and work down.
Within hours
A second carer who already knows the house
- Who arranges it
- You, with a message to somebody your relative has already met.
- What it costs
- Their own rate, usually £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included.
- What has to be in place first
- A second carer booked for the occasional visit beforehand, and a written care plan they have read.
Same day, if your carer offers it
A substitute your carer sends in their place
- Who arranges it
- Your carer. The contract gives a carer the right to send a suitably qualified substitute, and they arrange, pay and manage that person themselves.
- What it costs
- The rate you already agreed with your carer. Nothing further is asked of you.
- What has to be in place first
- Your agreement. You may object for a sound reason, such as the substitute not being able to meet the care needs you agreed.
A few hours to a couple of days
A carer you search for yourself
- Who arranges it
- You. Searching carers by postcode and messaging them is free, the same as it was the first time.
- What it costs
- The new carer's own rate, in the same £18 to £25 range.
- What has to be in place first
- The postcode, the dates, and a short description of what each visit involves.
Usually within a working day
A shortlist from PrimeCarers, over the phone
- Who arranges it
- You ring PrimeCarers and ask. We shortlist carers who cover your postcode and are free on those dates; you still read the profiles, speak to them and decide.
- What it costs
- The carer's own rate, plus a £40 finder fee charged only if you go ahead with one of them.
- What has to be in place first
- A phone call, the dates, and what the visits involve.
Same day, where the need is urgent
The council, if there is nobody and your relative is not safe alone
- Who arranges it
- The adult social care team at your relative's council, including the out-of-hours number at a weekend.
- What it costs
- Whatever the council decides after a financial assessment, which can happen afterwards rather than first.
- What has to be in place first
- Nothing arranged in advance. The Care Act 2014 lets a council meet needs that appear urgent before it has assessed anybody.
Hourly figures are what carers on PrimeCarers charge, with our fee included. Terms are from the client and carer contract, checked on 14 September 2026.
The top two rungs depend on decisions taken before anything went wrong: whether a second carer has ever been in the house, and whether your carer knows somebody they would send. The bottom three are open to anybody, at any hour.
It helps to know why a carer's time off lands on you at all. A carer working through an introductory service such as PrimeCarers is self-employed, so nobody pays them when they are ill. Statutory Sick Pay goes to people classed as employees, and the 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year that workers are entitled to does not reach them either. A week away costs them a week of income.
An agency handles the same week differently. It is a registered provider, and the regulations require it to deploy sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced persons, so it sends somebody else without asking you. You get cover without a conversation, and a face your relative has not met. Private carers compared with agency carers sets that trade out in full.
A holiday booked ahead
Covering a holiday you know about weeks in advance
A holiday is the easier version of this problem, because you have time. Almost all of the work sits in the weeks before, so that your relative meets the cover carer while their usual one is still there.
- When you first book
Ask how they handle time off
Put it in the first conversation, alongside the rate and the hours. The contract sets no fixed notice for a holiday, so agree what notice each of you will give and write it into the care plan.
- As soon as the dates are known
Get the dates in writing
A message or an email, so you are both working from the same week. That is also the moment to ask whether your carer has somebody in mind.
- Four to six weeks before
Choose the cover carer yourself
Search carers who work in the postcode and are free on those dates, read the reviews on their profiles, and speak to two or three.
- Two weeks before
Book one visit while your usual carer is still there
An overlapping visit lets the cover carer see the routine rather than read about it, and lets your relative meet them with nothing depending on it. It saves the first day of the holiday week.
- The week itself
Leave the care plan where both of them can find it
Medication times, what your relative can manage alone, what to do if something goes wrong, and how the cover carer gets in. NHS guidance on carers' breaks says to write this down in advance and name somebody who can open the door.
- The day they come back
Ask both carers what changed
A week is long enough for something to shift, and the two of them will have noticed different things.
The carer who covers a holiday is the obvious person to keep. Booking them for one visit a fortnight afterwards means somebody is already familiar with the house next time, and every rung on the ladder above gets faster once a second carer exists.
Live-in care needs more planning, because the cover carer has to be there day and night, so a fortnight off means a full replacement week booked in advance. Read how live-in care works alongside holiday cover while you are away, which is the same problem when it is you going away. A care plan you build with the carer does most of the handing over, and preparing for a carer's first day applies to the third carer as much as the first.
Ill this morning
What to do when your carer rings in ill
Short notice is the harder version, and the order you do things in matters more than the speed. The first question is whether your relative is safe for the next few hours.
The first morning, in order
0 of 9 ticked
In the first few minutes
In the first hour
If nobody is free today
Cancelling the visits your carer cannot work costs you nothing, because a visit that is not worked is not invoiced. What the contract charges in full is a visit you cancel, and even then unplanned hospitalisation, illness, or another reason your carer agrees to are exceptions. If your relative goes into hospital that week, say so early rather than letting the visits stand. To start looking now, search carers by postcode and filter to the dates you need covering.
A substitute carer
If your carer offers to send somebody else
The contract gives your carer the right to send a suitably qualified substitute in their place, at their own discretion and subject to reasonable objections from you. That right is part of what makes a carer self-employed rather than your employee, and it means the person at the door may be somebody neither you nor PrimeCarers has met.
What to ask before you agree
- Whether the substitute has a profile on PrimeCarers, so you can read their experience and reviews
- What experience they have of the condition your relative lives with, and when they last did the relevant training
- Whether they have read the care plan, and can be shown round before the first visit
- Who is paying them: your carer arranges and pays the substitute, and the rate you agreed does not change
- How many visits this is meant to cover, and what happens if it needs to run on
Sound reasons to say no
- The substitute cannot meet the care needs you and your carer agreed, such as moving and handling or a stoma
- Nobody can tell you who they are, or that they are legally allowed to work here
- There is no answer on whether they hold an enhanced DBS certificate
- Your relative has said plainly that they do not want a stranger in the house, and there is a workable alternative
- The substitution is open-ended when what you agreed to cover was a single week
A substitute is an independent professional in their own right. They are not your carer's employee, and they are not somebody PrimeCarers has checked unless they hold a profile of their own on the platform. If they do not, the identity check, right to work check, enhanced DBS check and online interview described in background checks on a private carer have not been done by anybody, and the asking falls to you. A family who would rather not do that can decline and take cover from the platform instead.
Sometimes an absence turns out to be a carer stepping away rather than a week off. Either of you can end an hourly arrangement on 48 hours' notice, and a live-in arrangement on a week's notice once the carer has been there for 168 hours in total, with 48 hours before that. A carer who leaves without notice, outside illness or a serious emergency, is not paid for visits they did not work, and the contract allows you to recover the reasonable cost of replacement care. A problem with your carer covers the conversation before it gets that far.
What it costs
What cover costs, and what you are charged for
Cover changes who does the visit. Whether it changes what you pay depends on which of the five routes you took, and on which of you cancelled.
| What you pay the carer | What PrimeCarers charges | |
|---|---|---|
| Your carer cannot work a booked visit | Nothing. The visit was not worked, so there is nothing to invoice. | Nothing. |
| You cancel a visit yourself | The full cost, unless it is unplanned hospitalisation, illness, or another reason your carer agrees to. | Nothing from us. PrimeCarers does not set the terms between you and the carer. |
| A carer you found yourself covers the week | Their advertised rate, usually £18 to £25 an hour. | Nothing extra. A profile rate already includes our fee. |
| You ring and ask us for a shortlist | The rate that carer advertises. | A £40 finder fee, charged only if you go ahead with one of them. |
| The cover falls on a bank holiday or Christmas Day | one and a half times the carer's normal rate on a bank holiday, and twice the carer's normal rate on Christmas Day. | Nothing extra. |
| A live-in carer takes a fortnight off | A replacement live-in week, from £1,050 and typically £1,120. | Nothing extra. |
Your carer cannot work a booked visit
- What you pay the carer
- Nothing. The visit was not worked, so there is nothing to invoice.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- Nothing.
You cancel a visit yourself
- What you pay the carer
- The full cost, unless it is unplanned hospitalisation, illness, or another reason your carer agrees to.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- Nothing from us. PrimeCarers does not set the terms between you and the carer.
A carer you found yourself covers the week
- What you pay the carer
- Their advertised rate, usually £18 to £25 an hour.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- Nothing extra. A profile rate already includes our fee.
You ring and ask us for a shortlist
- What you pay the carer
- The rate that carer advertises.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- A £40 finder fee, charged only if you go ahead with one of them.
The cover falls on a bank holiday or Christmas Day
- What you pay the carer
- one and a half times the carer's normal rate on a bank holiday, and twice the carer's normal rate on Christmas Day.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- Nothing extra.
A live-in carer takes a fortnight off
- What you pay the carer
- A replacement live-in week, from £1,050 and typically £1,120.
- What PrimeCarers charges
- Nothing extra.
Hourly and live-in figures are what carers on PrimeCarers charge, with our fee included. Contract terms checked on 14 September 2026.
An agency covers an absence without asking you, and the price of that sits in the hourly rate every week of the year. Agencies charge £28 to £35 an hour against the £18 to £25 carers advertise on PrimeCarers. Over an hour a day for a year that gap is £1,095 to £6,205, which buys a good deal of cover. What a private carer costs per hour breaks the rate down, and care agency or private carer weighs cover against the rest of the comparison.
If it is the cost of a long absence that worries you rather than the carer, your relative's council may pay towards care at home once it has assessed their needs and their savings. Local authority funding explains how to ask.
Questions
Questions families ask about cover
The visit does not happen and it is not invoiced, so you are not charged for it. Your carer may offer a substitute they arrange and pay themselves. If not, you can search carers who work in the postcode and are free on the dates, or ring PrimeCarers and ask us to shortlist carers who are available, with a £40 finder fee charged only if you go ahead with one of them. If nobody is free and your relative is not safe alone, ring their council's adult social care team.
No. A visit that was not worked is not invoiced. The contract charges the full cost when the client is the one cancelling, and even then unplanned hospitalisation, illness, or another reason the carer agrees to are exceptions. PrimeCarers charges nothing itself either way and does not set the terms between you and your carer.
Yes. The contract gives a carer the right to substitute a suitably qualified person at their own discretion, subject to reasonable objections from you, and the carer arranges, pays and manages that substitute. An objection can be about the substitute's qualifications, their safety, whether they can legally work here, or whether they can meet the care needs you agreed. Ask whether they have a profile on PrimeCarers; if they do not, nobody has run the identity, right to work or DBS checks on them.
The contract does not fix a notice period for time off, so agree one with your carer when you first book and write it into the care plan. What it does set is notice to end the arrangement altogether: 48 hours for hourly care, and a week for live-in care once the carer has been there for 168 hours in total, with 48 hours before that point.
PrimeCarers is an introductory service, so it does not provide or manage care and does not assign anybody to your relative. What it can do is shortlist carers who work in your postcode and are free on the dates you need, over the phone, for a £40 finder fee charged only if you go ahead with one of them. You read the profiles, speak to the carers and decide. Searching and messaging carers yourself is free.
Start with anybody who has already worked in the house, then message several carers near the postcode at once rather than one at a time. Work out which parts of the day cannot wait, because medication and getting up are urgent in a way that shopping is not. If nobody is free and your relative is not safe alone, ring the council adult social care team and ask for the duty social worker, using the out-of-hours number in an evening or at a weekend.
Yes. Under the contract a bank holiday is charged at one and a half times the carer's normal rate and Christmas Day at twice the carer's normal rate, and that applies to whoever works the visit. Away from those days a cover carer charges their own advertised rate, usually £18 to £25 an hour with our fee included.