Celebrating 15 years of helping find care for the elderly

Today is Clarity Care Consulting’s 15th birthday.

This is giving me an opportunity to look back over those 15 years. It is amazing to think about the hundreds of people we have helped navigate the social care system, find care services and to look at how the company, and especially the team has grown and evolved during that time.

In The Beginning

I decided to start Clarity Care Consulting with my friend Fiona Jeynes.  We both worked in the care industry but in different areas and were frustrated with how people struggled with finding the services they needed. This was particularly true for those who did not meet the criteria for receiving social care from their local council.

We’d both seen the concept of Independent Care Advisors in America and thought the idea could work in the UK, and from that Clarity Care Consulting was born.

We started with both of us working part-time on the business, we got our name known locally and started helping to find care for people.

The Clarity Care Consulting Ethos

Our aim is to Make Care Make Sense.

I have always believed that it is incredibly important for people to know that we are independent of any care providers and that our aim and purpose is to find the right solution for our clients, that meets their wishes and requirements with the best services available in their area and within their budget.

Our clients appreciate knowing our advice is based on their needs and wishes rather than us receiving any kind of incentive.  

Our First Big Challenge

Four years into the business, Fiona decided to leave Clarity Care Consulting.  I was faced with a difficult decision – carry on or close the business and do something else. I really believed in the idea of Clarity Care Consulting and what I wanted the company to be able to deliver, so not only did I decide to carry on, but I made the brave decision to work on the business full-time. I am always grateful of the support my husband gave me when I was making this decision, and he continues to play a supportive role in the business.

Growing the Team

Soon the business started to grow, and I had to make the decision to employ a member of staff. Not long after that it became clear I needed to add to the team again.

We have gone through several iterations over the years and everyone who has worked for Clarity Care Consulting has made a positive contribution to our growth. One team member even took us to Mount Everest Base Camp!!

Our First Qualified Social Worker

In 2021 I made the next big step in building the team at Clarity Care Consulting and decided to bring a qualified Social Worker on board. Donna Belkus joined the team and helped the company grow from strength to strength. Having a Registered Social Worker on board expanded the teams’ knowledge and expertise which meant that we were able to offer even more services to our customers and clients.

The Team Now

We now have 3 Registered Social Workers, a Care Advisor, an Operations Manager, a Care Funding Advisor and I am still here leading the team.  The depth of knowledge across the team is extensive and I’ve learnt so much from all of them. I am very grateful for their support for me as well as Clarity.

Our clients and our customers

Every one of our clients has a story to tell and we enjoy listening each and every time we meet them. Getting to know our clients is the best part of our role and we’ve loved getting to know them and helping them, whether that is undertaking a Care Assessment, helping them find the right care service or simply providing some care advice and pointing in the right direction. Taking the time to get to know our clients allows us to get a much better understanding of their care needs and desires.

We’ve had the excitement of working with families of famous people, people with honours and even members of the extended Royal family.

All our clients live in the UK, although we’ve had to help one or two of them return from living abroad, which has been interesting.

We have many family members located around the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, Mexico, America,  South Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and throughout the UK. There are probably a few countries missing from the list too.

We’ve enjoyed working closely with solicitors, Independent Financial Advisors and private healthcare providers to help their clients.

Our Services

Our services have developed and grown over time. Running a business comes with joys and challenges and we’ve been involved and tried new ideas, some worked and others we’ve not continued, everyday being a school day as they say.

We were asked by a well-known Private Healthcare Company to be part of a collaboration of organisations offering help to staff who have elderly relatives as an employee benefit.

We supported a local company who provide equipment for people going on cruises to find carers to accompany their clients going on a cruise. We worked  alongside a care agency to do this on a number of occasions, but in the end we decided this wasn’t going to work for us, but we did get to help facilitate a honeymoon cruise for one couple as part of the trial.

We now offer a range of different services, including Care Assessments, Mental Capacity Assessments, as well as a Personalise Finding Care Service and continue to provide support to clients whose family live at a distance or there is no family.

Giving Back

Giving something back is so important to me personally, and I so enjoyed being able to support charities close to my heart when we turned 10 years old. We ran several charitable events and raised over £5000 for 3 charities – Brain Tumour Research, Dementia UK and Rosemary Foundation.

We had hoped to continue some of the events we organised, but COVID put an end to that.

We now support our local memory café and members of the team attend the twice monthly meetings. They are primarily there to offer advice about social care, but they are often seen joining in with the activities too.

Frustrations

Our biggest frustration must be the lack of commitment from central government to resolve the obvious issues there are in the social care system, as well as social care being treated as the poor relation to the NHS. Both the Health & Social care need to be seen as two parts of the same system, but that is a very big political challenge to resolve and a topic for another day.

The Future

We’re very excited about the next 5, 10 or even 15 years. We’re looking forward to meeting lots of new people, developing services further and helping people navigate the social care system to find the right care solutions for families.