Howz Local · launching now for home care providers
Turn the enquiries you turn away into paying clients.
Howz Local licenses your agency to offer home monitoring as a new, billable service — combining activity data collected 24/7 and emergency alarm lines that are always in place with your proactive approach to care and support. We provide the platform, sensors, alarm routing and training. You keep the relationship, and your name stays on the door.
- NormalKitchen activity — usual morning routine
- FlagDisrupted night — unusual movement 02:00–05:00
- PromptSuggested check-in on today’s 10:00 visit
The problem you already know
Two main pressures
You live this every week. What’s been missing is a way to act on it without building the clinical, technical and training infrastructure yourselves.
Demand you can’t convert
The “too early” caller
Someone rings who isn’t ready to commit to scheduled, recurring hours — often exactly the person sitting in the UK’s ~370,000-person assessment backlog: too early, or too borderline, for a traditional care package. Today that call ends with “call us again when things get worse.”
Margin you can’t recover
Costs up, rates fixed
The National Living Wage rose to £12.21/hour and employer National Insurance to 15% — pushing the minimum sustainable price of care up 12.7% in a single year. With 70–80% of hours commissioned at fixed local-authority and NHS rates, you can’t pass that on. The only lever left is delivering care more efficiently.
How it pays
Manage more customers
Most care technology is sold to you as a cost. Howz Local is built to be something you sell — with the efficiency gains as a bonus, not the whole case.
New clients
It’s never too soon
Offer a monitoring package to the family who rang but isn’t ready for recurring visits — instead of asking them to call back when things get worse. When their needs grow, you’re already the agency in the home.
Existing clients
Add monitoring for families you already serve
Your current client base is the fastest place to start: families already paying for scheduled care, who want reassurance between visits. No acquisition cost, and a relationship that’s already there.
Margin
Put visit time where it’s needed
Activity data shows which visits matter and which could change. With costs up and commissioned rates fixed, using the hours you have more precisely is the lever you still control.
How it works
Full set-up and installation within a week
- 1
Assess
A structured needs-and-goals assessment recommends a sensor “prescription” matched to the person, not a one-size kit.
- 2
Install
Your team installs the prescribed Howz kit in the client’s home — standard activity sensors plus a safety-critical alarm unit.
- 3
Monitor
Sensors collect activity data 24/7. Your own staff review it on a local dashboard during working hours — no national call centre stands between you and your client.
- 4
Prompt
Rule-based flags surface to a carer in plain language — a disrupted night, prolonged inactivity — with a suggested check-in.
- 5
Respond
Your carer checks in and logs the outcome, building the evidence that visit patterns can genuinely change with the data.
What’s built for you, what stays yours
We provide the tech, you provide the care
Howz Local provides
The hardware and software that is bespoke to your organisation, care team and recipients
- The monitoring platform and sensor supply chain
- Emergency alarm lines in place 24/7, routed through existing national alarm receiving centre (ARC) infrastructure — proven, not a new call centre
- The needs-assessment methodology and sensor “prescription” logic
- Staff training, certification, and a one-page quality standard to operate against
- Geo-targeted digital marketing support once your territory is live
- A listing in the public directory of certified Howz Local agencies
You provide
What only a local, trusted operator can give a family
- Trained, certified staff to run day-to-day monitoring and installs
- The client relationship, install visit, and local billing
- Local marketing, co-branded under your own agency’s name
Your name leads; our mark vouches for you. Once your team completes certification, you can carry the Howz Local certified mark alongside your own brand — and families can check your agency in our public directory. It works like a quality badge on a product: it travels with your name rather than replacing it.
What it costs
Light upfront — you pay as your clients grow
No large franchise fee before you’ve seen a single client. There are three simple components:
- 1
One-off territory fee
Covers setting up your territory, onboarding, training and certification.
- 2
Platform fee per active client
An ongoing fee only for the clients you’re actually monitoring — it scales with your revenue.
- 3
Hardware at supply price
Sensors and alarm units at cost, with no mark-up from us.
Exact figures are being set from pilot data. Founding applicants help shape the commercial model.
Territory and rollout
We’re launching with a founding pilot cohort — deliberately
Howz Local is launching territory by territory, not all at once. Agencies that apply at launch are first in line for the earliest, most attractive local licences.
- Stage 1
Pilot
One territory, one agency, proving the full loop end to end before anything is templated.
- Stage 2
Founding cohort
3–5 further territories, deliberately varied (urban/rural, agency size) to stress-test onboarding.
- Stage 3
Scaled rollout
Territories prioritised by local care need, self-funder density, and agency quality signals.
- Stage 4
National coverage
Remaining territory whitespace, then adjacent markets — supported living, retirement housing.
What we look for, and how to join
A short, direct process — built to find the right agencies
What we look for
- An established local client baseExisting clients and families are where monitoring usually starts, so agency size matters.
- Commitment to training your teamStaff complete certification before clients go live, and operate to a shared quality standard.
How to join
- Apply or find out more Your choiceApply straight away with six quick questions, or book a call to find out more first. Either way, you speak directly with our team.
- Qualification callWe talk through your agency’s size, the area you cover and your appetite for training — and answer your questions.
- Discovery session and live demoSee the platform working, walk through the training and quality standard, and ask anything.
- Territory agreementA commercial proposal and your territory, agreed together.
- Train, certify, go liveYour team is trained and certified, then your first monitoring clients go live — and we track time to first client closely.
Questions agencies actually ask
Before you apply
What do we have to pay, and when?
The planned structure is deliberately light upfront: a one-off territory/onboarding fee, an ongoing per-active-client platform fee, and sensor hardware at supply price — not a large franchise fee before you’ve signed a single client. These figures are being finalised from pilot data, so early applicants have a real say in what’s fair.
Does this replace the care-management software we already use?
No. Whatever you run today for scheduling, rostering, or call monitoring — Birdie, CareLineLive, an Access Group product — stays exactly where it is. Howz Local is a monitoring service and a new revenue line that sits alongside it, not a replacement for your operations software.
Is someone watching the data around the clock?
No — and we want to be clear about that. Sensors collect activity data 24/7, and emergency alarm lines are in place at all times. The day-to-day activity data isn’t watched by a person around the clock: your team reviews it on the dashboard during working hours, with flags highlighting anything unusual — a disrupted night, prolonged inactivity — so you know where to look first.
What training is involved, and who’s responsible for the safety-critical side?
Your care staff complete a short training and certification programme covering install, day-to-day dashboard use, and the escalation protocol, plus a one-page quality standard you operate against. Safety-critical alerts route through the existing national Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) infrastructure already used across the sector — not a new Howz call centre — and escalate straight to your team.
Whose name is on the door with the family?
Yours. Local marketing is co-branded under your agency’s own name, with “Howz Local” functioning as a trust mark that travels with it — the same pattern used successfully elsewhere in home care, where the technology platform stays visible but deliberately secondary to the local brand families already know.
What does the certified mark mean for families?
It tells a family your team has completed Howz Local training and operates to the shared quality standard. Families can check any agency carrying the mark in our public directory of certified agencies — so the badge means something, and can’t simply be borrowed by an agency that isn’t part of the network.
What are you actually asking the pilot agency to prove?
Two things: that a simple assessment, starter sensor kit, and basic dashboard convert enquiries you’d otherwise turn away into paying monitoring clients — and that your staff genuinely use the resulting data to adjust visit patterns for existing clients, not just switch on a dashboard nobody looks at.
Now launching — founding pilot places open
Apply now, or find out more first
Ready to go? Apply in a few minutes. Want to talk it through first? Book a call at a time that suits you. Either way, you’ll speak directly with the Howz Local team — no call centre, no sales funnel.
- What we’ll cover Your agency, your territory, and how monitoring could work for your clients.
- What happens next If it’s a good fit, we’ll set up a discovery session with a live demo.