Social Care Awards 2021

GHP / Social Care Awards 2021 11 , Dec20346 As it nears the end of its second decade of operations, care agency One to One Private Care gives us an insight into operating professional care services in a small, communityminded area. Best All-Age Home Care Agency - Kent One 2 One Private Care Services is a privately owned small business with a big voice. Serving adults of any age, it provides carers directly to the public and offers care to people suffering from mental or physical conditions. Over the years it has been in operation, its staff have received specialist training to allow them to provide care for conditions such as spinal injuries, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis. Moreover, it aims to provide excellent continuity of care by matching the Care Worker to the individual they will be working with, ensuring its client’s comfort is first and foremost. This also allows the Care Worker and Service User to build up a rapport. Owned by founder Beverley Gregory and currently with six Care Workers, it offers a wide variety of services under its blanket term of private care. This includes services such as: call-ins, cancer care, cleaning services, dementia support, generalised home help, elderly care, high dependency care, and palliative care – just to name a few. Despite the small size of its team, it provides the best and most wide-ranging support it can for its clients. Due to the nature of its operation, its service users are privately funded. Many of the clients who approach the company hear about it through word of mouth reviews, its excellent local reputation often preceding it. Operating out of Ashford in Kent, its location has proved beneficial for One 2 One, as it works within a small tightly knit community. Word of mouth reviews travel far faster, and after it provides great care to one service user, it sees a lot of additional business in response. Although its team is small, they are an extremely committed and loyal group of people that the company is proud to work with. ‘We wouldn’t be in the position we are now without our dedicated Staff,’ Beverley Gregory told us. Many of them are involved in or work closely with Dementia Friends, a social movement organisation that is dedicated to normalising dementia and increasing awareness in local communities. To be a Dementia Friend is to learn more about dementia and its effects, providing support to sufferers and their friends and families in the area, seeking to change society’s misunderstandings about the condition. Furthermore, it prides itself on being a family owned business. Started in 2004, the start of the company was aided by the founder’s son, Keir, who was a cornerstone of the business’s initial victories in getting off the ground. In addition, he has remained in the business ever since. The road to success has also included challenges for One 2 One, however, and in the past year this has manifested in the impacts of the pandemic. The care industry has encountered both immense added pressure and scrutiny during the outbreak, as cost cutting measures taken by local councils cause many sectors that rely on such funding to suffer. With this and a looming economic downturn due to Covid-19 severely hitting revenue streams of sectors worldwide, one of the results has been a knock-on effect on working conditions. In tandem with this, the UK is currently facing a national recruitment crisis. Covid-19 has increased unemployment both in the UK and beyond dramatically as more businesses tighten their belts and try to find areas to cut running costs – given that the nation has been facing staff shortages across the board, this has escalated into an even more serious issue. In response, One 2 One is aiming to run a recruitment campaign that it plans to take forward into 2021. Through this initiative, it intends to look to add to the ranks of its Care Workers so that it can better attend to the needs of its growing roster of Service Users. This increased revenue, it promises, will be invested back into staff training and pay rises, making it a very attractive opportunity for growth. Company: One 2 One Private Care Services Contact: Beverley Gregory