'In home care you need to put up a barrier or you get emotionally wrecked'

ONE OF THE most important things that Christine King learned from her early days as a carer was the importance of forming some sort of emotional barrier.

King, 37, the co-founder of Dublin-based home care firm Castle Homecare, spent many of her nights away from home working in the sector while studying social science in college.

“I looked after a gorgeous lady for two years. Her husband had passed away and her family wanted the security of knowing that someone was at home. I was their security blanket,” she tells Fora.

“I would come in at 10 at night and do a sleepover and finish at eight in the morning. I did four nights a week with her over two years. The bond was quite strong.”

While King says that the work was rewarding, it also took its toll as she began to see her ward’s health decline.

“Sometimes nature takes its toll and the inevitable happens,” she says. “At the end of the time when I was working with her I began to notice a few things.

“She had dementia. I wouldn’t have been with her at that stage (when the dementia became acute). She passed away about six months after I started my company.

“I kept in touch with the family and with the client. She wouldn’t have remembered me at the end, I was just someone else who was calling in to say hello.”

Barrier

King notes that after the experience she learned the value in being able to separate her personal and work life.

“When I was younger I wouldn’t have seen much of this. My nanny had dementia when I was younger, but my mother looked after her and I was quite sheltered, I didn’t see the nitty-gritty.

“I wouldn’t have been subjected to any of this so I did get emotionally shocked at the start. You need to put up a barrier or you get emotionally wrecked and then you are no good to anyone.”

Christine King

After completing her social science degree, King left to work in home care in Australia in 2009 with her husband, a teacher.

The Wicklow native enjoyed travelling with her friends when she was younger and says that she felt a “pull” to try something different.

However, less than a year later the pair had returned to Ireland, two of the relatively few Irish to voluntarily make the trip back from Australia during the pits of the recession.

“We came home with nothing, all our savings were gone,” says King. “We had tried to start something in Australia, but we missed home too much. It’s not an easy thing, to come back, but it was the right decision and you only know by doing.”

Getting started

After returning home, King decided to try to use her experience from Australia to set up her own home care business with friend Rachel Scanlon, who had studied business in Drogheda.

“We decided to put our skill sets together, me from a social background and her from business,” King says. “We both took out separate loans from the credit union; not huge ones, but enough to get us laptops, brochures and a website.”

The pair rented out a very small office in Ballinteer – “someone had to leave the room if three people came in” – and started looking for clients.

Rachel Scanlon

“We had three or four carers on the books at the start and we kept it local. We took on one or two clients and then word got around, and then after about seven or eight months we started to work with the HSE,” King says.

Castle Homecare started out providing basic home care services for infirm and elderly people, such as washing and dressing or housework. It now provides a range of services dementia and Alzheimer’s care, although King stresses that her employees are not trained medical staff.

“We help with daily activities, every client is different,” King says. “Some might have difficulty getting up in the morning, or they may need help washing or preparing dinner. The girls go out and do an assessment of client needs.”

The company charges a flat rate of €24.50 per hour for its carers. King says that clients don’t tend to struggle to pay the company’s fees.

“When people come to us they normally have made a decision and have worked out what they can afford,” she says.

“A family member might do nights and we would do the day. Normally when people come to us they need the service, so they are willing to pay.

“There is also tax relief that family members can get and we would get them to the right areas so that they can claim it back.”

Carer and client needs

The company has expanded steadily since its establishment in 201, and now employs about 90 carers that provide home care services to 150 people.

King says that she focuses on the company’s recruitment and overseeing its carers, while Scanlon is focused on the ‘client side’ of the business.

She says that the company looks to ensure that the staff can easily talk to management and that there are supports in place.

“It is quite an isolating job that they are doing, so we have an open-door policy. The girls can come in and make themselves a coffee in between shifts and just talk or blow off steam if they have had a bad day,” she says.

Castle Homecare doesn’t have many ‘high-needs’ clients, for example people who are very ill.

“They tend not to be discharged from hospital or they are not safe at home so they would have to go to a nursing home. We come in at the stage before all this happens,” King says.

The company is mostly active in the area around its Ballinteer base in south Dublin, although it has also recently started moving into north Wicklow, where it is looking at setting up a footprint.

It has several large rivals, such as Home Instead Senior Care, which provide a similar service. King says that the Castle Homecare sets itself apart due to the level of involvement that the owners have with individual cases.

“Me and Rachel are still involved in every case, we feel that it is the right way for us, it is a very personal thing that we are doing,” she says.

Constant change

While King declines to give any indication of turnover, the company made a small profit of a little more than €20,000 in the year to the end of June 2015 to take its accumulated profits to about €118,000.

King says that the company is “not creaming it or anything, and anything that comes into the business we bounce back into it”.

Like many in the home care industry, she is hopeful that the sector could be included in some sort of agreement like the Fair Deal scheme, which provides financial support to people who need long-term nursing home care.

“In the seven years (since I started the company), only two of our clients have ever wanted to go into a nursing home. Because of advances in technology and medication it is easier to stay in your own environment,” King says

“The Fair Deal is only for nursing homes, it needs to come into home care and give people a choice.”

Rather than make grand statements on huge projected profits, King says that the company “will concentrate on what we are doing in south Dublin and Ballinteer”. However, she says that things have a habit of happening differently to how they are planned.

“I small business things are constantly changing – and your plans change as the business changes. You have to go with the direction that is right for you at the time. If the plans work out for us this year then we will be happy.”

This article is part of our weekly series examining the nuts and bolts of businesses. If you would like to see your company featured please email news@fora.ie.