Autumna is on a mission to help families understand and find the best later life care options. Our extensive database of over 26,000 care providers, includes care homes, home care agencies and retirement living operators. Additionally, we offer a free advice line to guide you in your choices.
Autumna’s journey began in 2006 when Debbie Harris needed to find a care home for her Aunty Margaret. With no prior experience and feeling unprepared, Debbie recognized the need for more detailed, impartial, and easily navigable online information about care options.
In 2009, Debbie founded Chosen with Care, a consultancy offering bespoke search services for self-funding families seeking later-life care and care homes. Over the next decade, Debbie and her team placed over 1,000 clients into carefully selected care homes and provided free advice to thousands more.
Known for independence, integrity, and empathy, Chosen with Care never accepted referral fees from providers, focusing solely on clients' best interests.
In 2019, Autumna was created to bring Chosen with Care online, offering a detailed care provider directory with more useful, searchable information than any other. Care providers can easily update their details on our platform, ensuring information remains current and relevant.
Autumna is committed to improving standards and transparency across the elder care sector, helping everyone access higher-quality care. Use our free advice line or our easy shortlisting service to find the best care options.
“My mission is to get people talking about care; we need to plan, we need to think ahead"
Roni joined the company to help the bespoke care searches that Autumna conducts on behalf of private clients.
Her wonderful telephone manner and ready sense of humour makes her a hit with care providers and care seekers alike.
Her previous experience includes working as an Activities Coordinator in a large care home, running a recruitment company, mentoring young adults, conducting IT and telephone training and working as production secretary on the classic TV series – Thunderbirds.
Outside office hours, Roni enjoys Nordic walking, travelling, cooking, quizzes, WI and running a book club.
Steph is another much-loved Family Liaison Adviser with Autumna – so good in fact, we hired her twice – initially in January ‘21 and then again in December ’22. (It’s a long story).
Coming from a Social Work background Steph understands the stresses and demands that carers face and her experience and expertise makes her uniquely qualified to support families in making what are very often, tough decisions.
Steph lives in Tamworth with her partner and two children and in her spare time enjoys cross-stitch, reading and playing the pan pipes.
Tosin may be one of the newest members of the advice line team but you’d never know it to speak with her. Within a matter of months she made the role entirely her own.
Although she primarily works answering the phones and responding to your many emails, she occasionally supports Marie working on data entry as well. At Autumna she’s become a bit of a jack-of-all-trades but then again, she’s certainly close to mastering many too!
When’s she’s not working hard, Tosin has a sporadic and often changing set of interests. If she had to pick a few favorites right now then she’d take a quiet night in with a good book, the blockbuster experience of the big screen (especially superhero movies) and being able to try all kinds of new food.
At the time of writing, Autumna had over 8,000 enhanced and active care provider profiles in its database. Marie uploaded and populated most of them and works tirelessly to maintain their relevance and validity.
Having worked for 14 years in care homes, home care and recruitment, Marie recently moved to south Wales with her retired firefighter husband, Steve and a golden Labrador puppy, Holly.
Marie has four grown-up children and two grandchildren. She is a Spurs supporter – which is slightly worrying and spends her spare time walking, exploring her new Welsh habitat, and reading.
She can also solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 2 minutes.
Kelly Cox is Autumna’s customer liaison guru having worked previously in recruitment for BUPA and more recently as Community Relations Lead for Hamberley Care Homes.
Kelly lives in Bedfordshire with her husband and son and describes herself as a home girl who loves nothing more than spending time with her family. They like walking, playing board games and doing jigsaw puzzles together.
She played flute in her school band and this developed into a love of music, theatre and shows.
She also has an alter-ego called Kelly Christmas due to her love of the festive season which begins each year for her in August and finishes sometime in July.
To say Shirley loves being out and about is an understatement. In fact, she’s a bit of a globetrotter travelling all over Europe and sailing around the Greek islands before flying down under or living it up in New York.
Her active lifestyle doesn’t stop when she gets back to the UK either as she loves going to the gym and even ran the 2014 London Marathon in just over 4 hours. She’s also a big supporter of local, non-league football team Tonbridge Angels.
Whilst her grown-up son is her world, we’d wager 'granddog' Boycie might come in a close second. He’s not included in her photo for nothing.
Having worked for most of his adult life in marketing, video production and the hospitality industry, Rob joined Autumna in a full-time administrative role in March 2020, just as the COVID pandemic pushed the country into lockdown.
He lives in Tunbridge Wells, with his wife, Autumna founder, Debbie Harris, which means he has no time for outside interests or hobbies. He used to enjoy nothing more than a good long sleep, however he hasn’t had one for a very long time.
His soul mate is Geoff, an old lurcher with very bad breath. They regularly spend early mornings planning their escape.
If you’ve read our newsletters, seen our social media, browsed our website or received any communications from Autumna whatsoever, there’s a good chance Mike has had his hand in it.
When he's not travelling to Berlin to spend time with his fiancé, he's back home by the seaside in Margate. You can usually guess his location by listening for the sound of seagulls every time he speaks.
Mike also has an MA in literature so he probably enjoys reading quite a bit but he tells us that his love and knowledge of music is even greater. His iTunes library has a rather sizable 8,536 songs but it's still growing. His biggest dislike is writing about himself in the third person.
If you're asking, "How do I find the best care home near me?" or "How do I find the best home care agency near me?", Autumna is here to help. Whether you're looking for a live-in care provider or retirement living developments, our simple questionnaire will help you shortlist care homes, home care providers, live-in care agencies, and assisted living communities in your area.
Contact us via email at info@autumna.co.uk or call our team of care experts for free, impartial, and independent advice about your senior care and later life options at 01892 335 330.
10,405
Care Homes
12,230
Home Care Services
1,204
Live-in Care Services
1,829
Retirement Living Developments
Autumna is the UK's largest and most comprehensive later-life living & elderly care directory. Our detailed search facility and team of expert advisors can help you find the best care homes, nursing homes, retirement homes, retirement villages, home care, and live-in care services for you or your loved one's needs. Our website is free to use, we are proudly independent, and we never take referral fees.
