27/08/2026
A homecare visit paid at £25 an hour is not underpaid work. It is loss-making by around £9 an hour.
That's what the Homecare Association 2026 minimum price of £34.42 an hour says, against a council average of £25.05. In the same six months, 44% of council areas saw a homecare provider exit, cease trading or hand contracts back.
The market isn't paying the sector's costs. The fee review that would fix it keeps slipping. That leaves the three levers a provider still owns. Admin cost. Rota tightness. Travel.
CareOS is domiciliary care software made for that operating reality. Every shift scored on skills, travel, availability and continuity. One-click reassignment on the same score. Any visit whose numbers don't work, flagged in the rota before it runs.
If your current care management software is not scoring the rota this way, it was built for a different fee environment. What most agencies are actually looking at when they consider switching from Birdie or PASS is that gap.
The fee gap is the sector's problem. The operating gap is yours.
If the fee review slips again, what does the 2027 rota look like?
