Meet Kriti Gandharba, Care Worker at Abbots Care, whose quiet intuition and gentle presence reveal the extraordinary emotional skill behind live-in care.
If you walked into the house on a quiet weekday afternoon, you might hear singing first. Not loud or showy — just a soft melody drifting from the living room. That’s Kriti. She doesn’t announce herself when she comforts someone; she lets calm settle gently, like dust in warm light.
This is the side of live-in care few people ever witness. We often picture the practicalities of medication, meals, mobility support, but the real work happens in these small, human moments. The quiet art of connection is what turns care into something deeper, something that feels like home.
Kriti grew up in Nepal, in a place where caring wasn’t a job title. It was simply woven into the rhythm of family and community life. When she came to the UK and joined Abbots Care, she didn’t imagine she was stepping into anything extraordinary. Yet her natural instincts soon revealed themselves as rare and powerful.
Earlier this year, Kriti and her rotation partner, Mary Jean, were finalists at the Dementia Care Awards, something she still talks about with disbelief, as if someone else earned it.
For the past eighteen months, Kriti has lived in rotation supporting a client with dementia. Live-in care comes with its own gravity: days blend into evenings, which soften into nights where you sleep lightly, listening instinctively for the smallest signs of distress. There is no clocking off. You inhabit another person’s world, their routines, their vulnerabilities.
Over time, Kriti has learned the heartbeat of the home — when anxiety is rising, when confusion is taking hold, when calm is needed more than conversation. Her client’s daughter puts it beautifully:
“Kriti has been flexible and creative in the care she provides, altering her strategies to accommodate my father’s mood and anxiety. She sings gently to him when he is stressed and speaks in a quiet, soothing way, which he finds reassuring.”
This creativity, a song, a tone of voice, a gentle redirection, is rarely acknowledged in job descriptions, yet it is at the core of great care. Care Workers like Kriti practise a kind of emotional craftsmanship, reading moments and responding with instinct that can’t be taught from a manual.
After eighteen months, she is no longer just a visitor in the home. She has become part of its rhythm — the steady presence who knows the family’s preferences, the songs that trigger memories, the routines that bring comfort. As the client’s daughter explains:
“Kriti is keen to learn the way the family does things, which has allowed her to mirror what my parents are used to. This means she fits in well.”
Blending into someone’s life with such sensitivity is a skill in itself. Live-in care requires emotional intelligence, patience and humility — the ability to respect a household’s private world while shaping it gently, day by day.
We talk a lot in the sector about “good care,” often reducing it to tasks or timings. But Kriti shows that good care is relational. It’s imaginative. It’s about being present, not just performing duties. Whether she’s encouraging eating during a low-appetite day, redirecting confusion without judgment, or sharing companionable silence on a difficult afternoon, she treats every moment as an opportunity to add comfort and dignity.
Her client’s daughter describes her as:
“An excellent, hard-working and skilled Care Worker… She always smiles and has natural warmth. She never complains, despite the long hours. Some people are just born to care, and Kriti is one of those.”
Ask Kriti about the praise, and she simply smiles, modest as ever.
“I feel incredibly honoured and privileged to do the work that I do, and to get recognition from the family and the awards committee is really lovely.”
Live-in care is demanding and often misunderstood. But in homes across the country, Care Workers like quietly hold families together, offering stability, dignity and connection during some of life’s most vulnerable moments.
Great care doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes, it sounds like a soft song in a quiet room.
