Pillar one
Move
Physical
Strength, balance, mobility and the confidence to keep moving safely at home.
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About us
Built inside a real home care business, not a consultancy slide deck.
Five Pillars exists because a working UK home care company needed a better answer to a question every independent provider is asked: what actually makes you different?
The starting point
Every business has a starting point.
For Five Pillars, it began at Abney & Baker.
Ian Willis founded Abney & Baker, a CQC-registered home care company in Bath, with a simple belief: care should help people need less of it, not more.
Ian and co-founder Sarah worked closely together, and kept returning to the same question. So much of home care is reactive. A visit, a task list, a box ticked on an app. Washed, dressed, fed, logged. All of it necessary, none of it asking the bigger question: is this person actually doing well?
So they started asking it. Is the home safe to move around in? Is she drinking enough water? Has he spoken to anyone this week? What does this person want to still be able to do in a year, and what would it take to get them there? Is she happy, not just clean and fed?
Building a structure
Those questions changed how the team worked.
Over time they became a structure: five connected areas that shape whether an older person stays capable, confident and at home.
Pillar two
Think
Cognitive
Noticing cognitive change early and building meaningful engagement into every visit.
Pillar three
Nourish
Nutritional
Nutrition, hydration and appetite, the quiet foundations of everyday capability.
Pillar four
Connect
Social & emotional
Loneliness and emotional wellbeing treated as part of care, not an add-on.
Pillar five
Live
Home safety
The home itself: hazards, lighting, equipment and the small changes that prevent harm.
The Impact
Real impact for the people who mattered most.
The difference showed up in the places that mattered: the client, the adult child and the care home business. Carers had a bigger purpose in what they noticed and helped improve the clients along the way. Clients were supported to stay capable for longer. And adult children, the ones who lie awake wondering whether Mum or Dad is really coping, felt more confident in the care their parents were receiving, with more of their visits spent as family rather than as an inspection.
The business grew too, not through aggressive marketing, but through care that people could see working based on preventative care and were glad to recommend.
From business to framework
Turning a better Programme of care into real momentum.
Ian and Sarah developed that thinking into the Five Pillars Framework, and Five Pillars exists to help other providers put it to work.
Ian leads Five Pillars; Sarah continues as co-founder alongside him. We coach providers to build prevention into their whole service, train their existing teams to deliver it, and help them tell that story to families, turning a better Programme of care into real commercial momentum.
We don't sell a product to resell. We coach a change that sticks, so your care business can make the difference you set out to make when you started it.
How the brands relate
One Framework, two approaches
People often ask how Five Pillars and EverFit fit together. The short version is below.
The Framework and the coached Programme. It gives home care providers a structured route to assess where they are, design a prevention led service Programme, put it into practice and keep developing it.
EverFit began as the Move pillar in practice: a structured strength, balance and mobility Programme your own carers deliver. It is expanding to cover other pillars, starting with Nourish.
The corporate detail. The Five Pillars of Later Life Health, EverFit and the associated marks and materials are owned by Ryecroft Group Ltd, which holds the intellectual property in the Programme. The Programme is operated by Ryecroft Health Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 16178378, whose registered office is 6 Coburg Villas, Camden Road, Bath, BA1 5JF. Our correspondence address is Oakwood House, 7 Spa Road, Melksham, SN12 7NP.
The people behind it
The team you would actually be working with
A small, hands on team of home care operators rather than a large consultancy. You will be working with the people who ran this pivot inside their own business.
Ian
Founder and Programme lead
Home care operator. Led the original development of the Five Pillars Programme inside a working business, and the pivot the case study describes.
Sarah
Co-founder, Five Pillars
Your first point of contact. Sarah talks with providers about their organisation, answers questions about the Five Pillars Programme and helps them understand the next steps.
Lydia
Business Manager, EverFit
Lydia manages EverFit day to day, supporting providers through the Programme and their EverFit Licence. She helps you grow your business and maintain consistent delivery standards.
Georgie
Licenced Programme Development Lead
Georgie is a biomedicine practitioner and trainer specialising in mobility, strength and rehabilitation. She develops the Programme and trains carers to help older adults stay strong and independent.
Court
Business Development
Court helps develop the Five Pillars business, building relationships with care providers and exploring opportunities to bring preventative care to more organisations.
Being straight with you
What we do not claim
A Programme that overpromises is worse than no Programme at all, particularly in care. So it is worth being clear about the boundaries.
- We are not a clinical service and we do not provide treatment
- We do not replace healthcare, therapy or rehabilitation
- We do not replace your safeguarding processes
- We do not promise a specific commercial outcome
- We do not publish figures that have not been approved and put in context
- We do not sell software, and the Programme does not require any
What we do is help providers strengthen everyday preventative practice, notice concerns earlier and involve the right professionals when a person's needs require it.
Want to see whether this fits your business?
Start with a Personalised Sameness Report, or book a straightforward call with the team. No obligation either way.