Homecare success story

Her­itage Health­care, a nation­wide home­care fran­chise with its head office in Dar­ling­ton, pro­vides expert care to peo­ple assessed as need­ing sup­port to con­tin­ue liv­ing inde­pen­dent­ly, with­in their own home and com­mu­ni­ty.

Although as a com­pa­ny Her­itage Health­care was only formed in 2008, the jour­ney in care for chief exec­u­tive Glenn Pick­ers­gill has been a long one. The Pick­ers­gill fam­i­ly first began pro­vid­ing care in 1955 when Glenn’s grand­ma Annie set up a three-bed care home in Dar­ling­ton. She ran the home suc­cess­ful­ly until 1970 when she retired after putting Glenn’s par­ents, Mar­i­on and Jim, in charge. Glenn was 10 years old when he moved in to the care home and got his first real insight into car­ing for the res­i­dents.

Glenn and his fel­low direc­tors of Her­itage Health­care, Sal­ly Pick­ers­gill, Michelle Fen­wick and Aman­da Jack­son, who togeth­er have more than 80 years of expe­ri­ence in care, are now shar­ing their exper­tise with fran­chise part­ners. As a fam­i­ly-run organ­i­sa­tion, they are look­ing for a spe­cial kind of fran­chisee who will uphold the expert rep­u­ta­tion they have ded­i­cat­ed their careers to build­ing.

Him­self a fran­chisee, Glenn began to research the prospect of fran­chis­ing Her­itage Health­care. “I start­ed to research the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fran­chis­ing the busi­ness in 2011. We were con­fi­dent in our poli­cies and pro­ce­dures and the qual­i­ty assur­ance we worked to,” he says.

After only four years of fran­chis­ing, Her­itage Healthcare’s com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing an expert ser­vice to both fran­chisees and clients saw them win the pres­ti­gious British Fran­chise Association’s Emerg­ing Fran­chisor of the Year Award 2017.

While fran­chis­ing has many ben­e­fits for a fran­chisor in terms of growth, it sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fits their fran­chisees. In 2015, the fran­chise sec­tor con­tributed £15.1 bil­lion to the UK econ­o­my. The sec­tor, which includes more than 44,000 fran­chisee-owned busi­ness­es, now employs over 621,000 peo­ple.

As a fam­i­ly-run organ­i­sa­tion, they are look­ing for a spe­cial kind of fran­chisee who will uphold the expert rep­u­ta­tion they have ded­i­cat­ed their careers to build­ing

As a fran­chisee you are self-employed, own­ing, run­ning and reap­ing the rewards of your own busi­ness. When pur­chas­ing a fran­chise, you not only have the sup­port of your fran­chisor, but fran­chisees with­in your net­work and the wider fran­chise com­mu­ni­ty. The British Fran­chise Asso­ci­a­tion (bfa) reg­u­lar­ly holds events for fran­chisees where you can meet new peo­ple and learn about their expe­ri­ences with their fran­chisor. You can also access a range of advice, sup­port and mon­ey-sav­ing infor­ma­tion through the bfa.

Your fran­chisor works with you, and the sup­port team advis­es and assists you across the board. You may be a busi­ness man­ag­er with a wealth of expe­ri­ence, but have no idea where to start with mar­ket­ing your busi­ness; they can help you with that. You may want to open a home­care busi­ness, but have nev­er worked in care in your life; they can help you with that too. When you buy a fran­chise, you buy the expe­ri­ence of the fran­chisor and the exper­tise of their sup­port team.

A report pub­lished by Fran­chise Busi­ness Review notes that home­care has grown from a promis­ing fran­chise mod­el back in 2005 to one of the strongest sec­tors in fran­chis­ing. The report says: “Home­care is a nat­ur­al fit for fran­chis­ing. It’s a busi­ness that is high­ly reg­u­lat­ed and sys­tem ori­en­tat­ed, while at the same time high­ly per­son­al.” The review also high­lights: “Demand for home­care ser­vices is expect­ed to grow and it’s one of the few indus­tries that com­bines a ‘feel good’ ser­vice offer­ing with attrac­tive income.”

Mr Pick­ers­gill con­cludes: “We feel this is the per­fect time for fran­chisees to invest in this grow­ing mar­ket, which offers sta­bil­i­ty, job sat­is­fac­tion and great rewards for those who are ded­i­cat­ed to pro­vid­ing excel­lent qual­i­ty care.

“As a Her­itage Health­care fran­chisee, you will get the guid­ance and sup­port from our knowl­edge­able man­age­ment team who have a track record of build­ing suc­cess­ful home­care busi­ness­es, under­stand the legal reg­u­la­tions and impli­ca­tions, and know how to pro­vide a ser­vice which makes a real dif­fer­ence to people’s lives.”