Care first EAP overview

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Care first no longer exists as a standalone brand. After 30+ years as one of the UK's best-known public sector EAPs, it was sold by Priory Group to Optima Health plc for £350,000 in a deal that completed on 2 June 2025, and the brand was retired on 1 February 2026 when the service became the Optima Health EAP Service. The care-first.co.uk domain now redirects to Optima Health.

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In its prime, Care first served over 1,000 organisations from 30 to 200,000+ employees, with particular strength in local government, NHS trusts, universities and social care, and it white-labelled its EAP app for Aviva group protection from 2016.

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If your organisation still holds a Care first contract, you are now an Optima Health customer, and the questions worth asking are about migration, continuity of counsellors and what changes at renewal.

Counselling on Care first

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Care first's defining feature was that its 24/7 helpline was answered directly by BACP-accredited counsellors rather than call handlers, with no limit on in-the-moment support calls. Where clinically appropriate, callers were referred into structured counselling, typically up to 6 sessions per referral, delivered face to face, by phone, online chat or video.

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Practical issues such as debt, housing and childcare were handled by information specialists trained by Citizens Advice, available on weekdays.

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Under Optima ownership the same delivery engine continues, with counselling across the UK via video, telephone or in person when clinically required, but the combined offer's standard session count is no longer published and is contract-dependent.

Other services on Care first

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Integrations

Care first had no workplace tool integrations. Its app was white-labelled for Aviva, and in 2022 it added the Woebot AI chatbot. Under Optima, the EAP now sits inside a much larger occupational health stack: OH assessments, physiotherapy, health surveillance and case management.

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Confidentiality

Care first delivered in line with the BACP code of ethics with standard risk-of-harm exceptions, and around 40 staff transferred to Optima Health with the acquisition.

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Extras

Manager consultancy, mediation, critical incident and trauma support, whistleblowing lines for some contracts, and the weekly wellbeing webinar programme that became well known during Covid.

What Care first did well

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Counsellor-answered helpline

BACP-accredited counsellors picking up the phone directly, with unlimited in-the-moment calls, was the model's genuine strength and the reason so many councils, NHS trusts and universities bought it.

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Public sector trust

Thirty years of delivery and deep penetration of the public sector made it a low-risk default choice, with Citizens-Advice-trained specialists valued for practical money and housing queries.

The concerns now

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A vanishing brand

The £350,000 sale price from Priory, against roughly £3.7 million of revenue, tells its own story about the state of the business. Buyers now face contract migration into an unproven combined service.

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No public accountability data

Care first never built a consumer review footprint: no Trustpilot, no Google reviews, no app store base. Employers cannot benchmark employee satisfaction, and Optima Health's own Trustpilot sits at 1.9, dominated by occupational health complaints.

Care first was a good citizen of the old EAP world: counsellors on the phone, public sector credibility, practical advice lines. Its ending was quiet and abrupt, a £350,000 fire sale and a rebrand seven months later.

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For existing customers, the sensible move is to treat the Optima migration as a natural review point: re-tender, benchmark usage, and ask what your employees actually got from the service last year.

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For buyers researching Care first today, the product you are reading about can no longer be bought. The nearest equivalents are Optima Health's EAP service or a modern alternative.

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How Care first compares to Spill

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A comparison here is really a comparison with Optima Health, since Care first's service now lives there: a phone-first, triage-led EAP with capped session courses. Spill gives every employee unlimited therapy with same-day availability, booked in one click inside Slack or MS Teams, from BACP-registered counsellors in the top 5 percent of applicants.

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Contract style matters most in a migration moment. Legacy Care first agreements were annual contracts now moving to a new owner; Spill runs on a rolling 30 day contract from £75 a month, so a team coming off a retired brand can switch this week and stay only as long as it keeps working.

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Choose Care first if you are tied into an Optima migration and the service is genuinely being used. Choose Spill if the acquisition has prompted a review and you want unlimited, same-day therapy your team will actually use.

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Reviewing your options after the Optima migration? Book a demo and see Spill live before your renewal date.