The larger change
Rebuild the service the way we did
It is the one these numbers describe: a company result, across every client and every visit.
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Case study
How one care company’s fortunes changed after its pivot to preventative care.
Abney & Baker, Bath and Wiltshire. March to July 2026. Actual figures, not projections.
Revenue
+15.6%
£159,200 → £184,100 per month
Service delivery profit
+20.1%
£67,300 → £80,800 per month
Service delivery margin
+1.62 pts
42.27% → 43.89% of revenue
Source: Abney & Baker management accounts, March and July 2026. Same company throughout.
First, a disclosure
Abney & Baker is our own company
We did not design the Five Pillars and then look for a care company to test it on. We ran it inside the home care business we own and operate, because if we were not willing to bet our own margins on it, we had no business asking you to.
That means two things: we can show you the real numbers, and you should read them knowing there was a founder’s level of commitment behind them. Both facts belong on the table.
The starting point
The same trap you are probably in
At the start of 2026, Abney & Baker looked like every other decent independent home care company. Good rating, committed carers, and a website promising compassionate, person centred care from trained and regulated staff. These were the same promises as every competitor, which meant enquiries shopped on price, and growth meant selling more hours of the same commoditised thing at pressured margins.
Reactive care has a second problem beyond sameness: its economics worsen as it succeeds. More clients means more short visits, more travel between them, and more of every pound spent getting a carer to a doorstep rather than caring on the other side of it.
The pivot
A way of working, not a marketing wrapper
Between March and July 2026 the company rebuilt its service around the Five Pillars. Existing carers, existing rotas, no new hires and no new software. What changed was what a visit does: validated assessments at the start of care across strength and balance, cognition, nutrition, loneliness and home safety; structured noticing woven into ordinary visits; escalation pathways when something shifts; and measurement running underneath it all.
Positioned as care that works on the decline itself, with evidence, the company stopped being one of the eleven interchangeable providers its own market analysis had identified. It could say something nobody else locally could say, and back it up. That changed the enquiries it won, the services families asked for, and the shape of the work: more substantial packages, including live in care, where a carer’s day is spent caring rather than travelling.
MoveWhere EverFit came from
What happened to the numbers
Five months, actuals, same company throughout
| Measure | March 2026 | July 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | £159,200 | £184,100 | +15.6% |
| Service Delivery Profit | £67,300 | £80,800 | +20.1% |
| Service Delivery Margin | 42.27% | 43.89% | +1.62 pts |
Source: Abney & Baker management accounts, monthly figures for March and July 2026.
Service Delivery Profit includes all direct costs of delivering care. It excludes supervision costs and overheads, so the figures are not distorted by changes in team structure during the period.
Read the three rows together, because they carry the whole story: profit grew faster than revenue, and the margin went up while it happened.
The work changed shape: substantial, prevention-led packages, won on something other than price. Revenue up 15.6%, service delivery profit up 20.1%, margin up 1.62 points — the profit line is growing out of the mix, not out of volume alone.
Bars use a common scale, with July 2026 = 100%. The £13,500 monthly increase is equivalent to £162,000 annualised, not a measured full-year result.
What EverFit contributed
A practical Programme for strength, balance, mobility and falls prevention
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.
EverFit complements the wider Five Pillars approach, with a clear connection to movement and the shared aim of preventing falls. Existing carers were trained as coaches to deliver the Programme. It runs on weekdays, booked into the quieter middle of the day, using rota hours that personal care leaves empty.
The expansion to Nourish is current and is not part of the historic results below.
The service line was running throughout this period, so its revenue sits inside the figures above: about two per cent of billings, around fifteen visits a week. It works primarily as an upsell: existing clients adding a preventative session alongside the care they already buy, at a higher price per visit and a materially better service delivery margin than regular care. That makes it incremental revenue from a client base the business already had, which is the cheapest sale in the business.
What happened to the team
“My team is already stretched”
Care team growth
+18.4%
March to July 2026
Monthly job advertising spend
−52%
£1,125 → £536 a month
Equivalent to about £7,068 a year in savings.
That is the objection every owner raises about prevention. Here is what the period actually looked like on the people side: the care team grew by eighteen point four per cent, while monthly job advertising spend fell from £1,125 to £536, a fifty two per cent reduction worth about £7,068 a year.
We will say this carefully, because it deserves care: those things happened since the pivot, and we will not claim to have isolated every cause. But we can tell you what carers tell us. When your work leaves a client stronger, steadier and still themselves, it is worth turning up for and worth telling other carers about. Our experience is that a genuinely preventative service is easier to recruit into, not harder, because differentiation works on carers as well as on families. If a family can tell you apart from the agency down the road, so can the person deciding where to send their CV.
What we are not claiming
What these results do not prove
This case study covers five months in one care business. It shows what happened during that period, but it does not establish the following claims.
- That the results are proven over the long term. Five months provides an early picture, not evidence of sustained performance over several years. We are continuing to build the evidence base.
- That every care provider will achieve the same results. This business had committed founders and the freedom to make changes independently. Your starting point, team and market may be different.
- That prevention alone caused every financial improvement. The business changed its positioning, the work it won and how it delivered care. These figures do not isolate the effect of any one change.
- That EverFit drove the overall business results. EverFit accounted for two per cent of billings during this period. Its session economics are separate from the wider business results shown here.
- That improved client health outcomes have already been demonstrated. Outcome measurement began with the service changes, and the data is still developing. We will report those findings when there is enough evidence to support them.
What this means if you run a care company
The transferable part is the sequence
It is not our postcode or our service mix. It is the sequence: an honest baseline of what your service actually does today, a deliberate choice about what you will be known for, the operational change built into ordinary visits with your existing team, and measurement from day one so the story is provable rather than promised.
That sequence is what the Five Pillars Programme walks a company through. The first step is small and deliberately honest: a scoped review of what the opportunity is worth in your business, including your market and your numbers, with our written opinion on whether and when to move, including “not yet” if that is the truth.
Those are unit economics, not a company result. They tell you what a visit is worth, not what a year is worth. But they are the part you can test without committing to anything larger.
See what your version of these numbers could look like
Talk to us. Twenty minutes, no pitch — and an honest answer either way.