Thoughtful care at home for families who want comfort, continuity, and someone they can trust.
Live-In Care in Littlehampton
Care that lets your parent stay put in Littlehampton
Moving into a care home usually means leaving town altogether, because the nearest bed is rarely the nearest thing to home. Live-in care removes that trade-off: your mum keeps her own bed, her own kitchen and the walk down to the prom, with someone there around the clock.
Cheriton Homecare has spent close to thirty years placing carers across Sussex. Long enough to know why a bungalow out at Climping needs a carer who drives, and which BN17 streets one can actually park on. We cover the whole of West Sussex, out to our live-in care in Brighton and Hove further along the coast. New to all this? Start with our guide to what live-in care involves.
The difference families say they feel
The right kind of help for everyday life at home
No two placements look alike. Some households need a hand for an hour either side of the day, others need somebody alongside them from waking to bed, and the duties of a live-in carer stretch or shrink to fit.
Personal care
Discreet help with washing, dressing, continence, and moving around the home, done the way your loved one prefers.
Companionship
A familiar daily presence for conversation, hobbies, and walks along the seafront, keeping the small routines that make life feel normal.
Medication reminders
Prompting the right medication at the right time, with the same carer there each day to notice changes early.
Alzheimer's disease & dementia care
Calm, consistent support from one carer who learns your loved one’s routines and eases the confusion that change can bring.
Palliative care
Comfort-focused care at home, working alongside the GP and district nurses so your loved one stays where they feel safe.
Household chores and assistance
Help with cooking, laundry, shopping, and keeping the home running, so day-to-day life stays manageable.
What you get from us that a national introduction agency won't give you
Plenty of live-in care in this part of Sussex is booked through large agencies who pick a carer off a database and run the placement from an office hundreds of miles away. Nobody visits. Nobody local is accountable. Our model is the opposite: a member of our team sits in your front room first, you approve the carer before a bag is unpacked, and the manager responsible for the placement is someone you can phone by name.
- Rated Outstanding in Caring by the Care Quality Commission, a level very few providers in the country reach
- Enhanced DBS clearance on every carer, with training that carries on for as long as they work with us
- Nobody turns up unannounced. You read a written profile and speak to your carer before deciding
- The care plan is built around the real day, not a template, and it moves when health does
- We already deal with the clinical teams here, from the GP surgeries and community nursing to the discharge staff handling Littlehampton and Worthing patients
- A rural placement is not a town placement. A cottage the far side of Arundel calls for a carer who drives and a weekly shopping plan. A flat near the High Street does not
- Cover is planned rather than improvised. Families follow the digital records, a care manager checks in on a schedule, and any leave is filled ahead of time by a carer already known to the household
The things a residential home takes away, and live-in care doesn't
A terrace off the High Street, a bungalow in Rustington, a house backing onto the fields at Lyminster: whichever it is, live-in care means the address on the letters never has to change.
- Nothing gets packed up. When memory or balance is going, the last thing that helps is a strange room in a strange building.
- One face, every day. Not a rota of twenty. Somebody who learns how your dad takes his toast and which chair is his.
- The ordinary stuff survives. The cat stays. The tomatoes in the greenhouse stay. So does Thursday bowls.
- Relatives come when they like. No visiting slots, no front desk. The grandchildren can call in on the way home from school.
- You keep your own town. Same surgery, same chemist, same people saying hello on the prom. Care homes sit where the vacancy is, which is often nowhere near the family.
- The sums are closer than people expect. Live-in care can land as much as 30% under a residential placement, and for couples the gap widens considerably. Worth reading the other advantages before you commit either way.
Three types of care, and how to tell which one you're after
The terms get swapped around, but live-in care and genuine 24-hour care are two different arrangements. A live-in carer is based in the house and takes agreed breaks, sleeping overnight in most placements or staying up where that’s needed. If somebody requires attention with no break in it whatsoever, that takes two carers working in rotation instead of one.
Visiting care is another thing entirely. Somebody calls in at fixed times, does what’s needed and goes. That’s fine for a person still largely managing alone, though out towards the villages it also means a carer on the road to you several times a day whatever the weather is doing.
From your first call to your carer's first morning
Sometimes there’s no time at all, after a fall or a ward telling you the bed is needed, including discharges coming out of Worthing or over from Chichester. In those cases we can have somebody in place inside a few days. When the pressure is off, we take it slowly.
Ring us, message us, or leave a number and we’ll come back to you when it suits. We’ll answer what we can, ask what we need to, and tell you what happens next.
Richard Barnett, our Registered Manager, or Nastasha, our Field Care Supervisor, comes out in person. As well as the medical side and the daily routine, they take in what no form asks about: parking, the distance to the chemist, whether those stairs are going to be a problem.
Written profiles come to you, you ask anything you want, and the decision is yours. For addresses outside town we only put forward carers who drive.
Your carer arrives on the date agreed, and Daisy, our Care Coordinator, keeps in contact across those first few days while the household settles.
A case manager reviews how it’s going, and senior management review the case managers. That second layer is the one most agencies leave out.
Our rates, and what pushes them up
- From £1,190 a week for one person
- From £1,476 a week where a couple share the home
Charging is weekly. The rate buys one carer living in and giving one person, or one couple, their full attention.
Two things move it: how much the days take, and what the nights ask.
- Sleeping nights. Your carer sleeps in their own room and gets up if called. This covers most households.
- Waking nights. Your carer stays up and on duty, for someone repeatedly awake, disorientated, or needing turning. The rate is higher.
Not sure which describes your mum’s nights? That one is for the home visit, not the phone. Both figures are the private rate, and many families never pay all of it.
Paying for it: The routes worth checking
We take on privately funded and publicly funded arrangements alike. Four routes are worth checking before you assume the whole figure is yours.
- NHS Continuing Healthcare. We’re experienced in supporting NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) funded care packages. Eligibility rests on health needs, not savings.
- Local authority funding. West Sussex County Council may contribute after a means-tested assessment. Ask adult social care for a free needs assessment first.
- Direct Payments. The council’s contribution paid to you rather than to a provider, so the choice of agency stays yours.
- Attendance Allowance. Not means-tested, and the one families most often miss. It won’t meet a live-in rate alone, but it goes towards it.
Local live-in care for families across Littlehampton
We proudly support older adults in the following communities with live-in care that honours their life:
Common concerns families in Littlehampton want clarity on
Does a live-in carer need their own bedroom?
They do. A private room with somewhere to put their things and somewhere to spend their break is essential. A second bathroom isn’t a requirement, though everyone finds the arrangement easier where there is one.
Can live-in care work in a retirement or sheltered flat?
Is there anything a live-in carer cannot do?
Yes. Anything needing a registered nurse stays with the nursing team: injections, wound dressings, catheter changes and the like. Your carer handles everything around them and works alongside the district nurses rather than in place of them.
Can my live-in carer drive me to appointments?
Yes, provided they hold a full licence and your policy covers them to drive your car. Where families would rather not add a driver, we can look for a carer with their own vehicle instead.
Can we arrange live-in care for just a few weeks?
Yes. Short placements are common: covering the weeks after a hospital stay, giving family a break, or simply trying the arrangement before anyone commits to it long-term.
It's fine to ring without knowing what you need
The people who call us are usually partway through a rotten fortnight. A fall in the night, a discharge date nobody was ready for, or a parent who has slowly stopped managing and won’t say so.
Hardly anyone knows at that point whether the answer is live-in care, a couple of visits a day, or something else again. Tell us what’s been happening, and we’ll give you a straight view of it. If a different kind of care suits you better, we’ll tell you that too. Nothing is scripted and nobody is sold to.
