Live-in care initiative helps John and Phil to a major industry award

13-January-2022

John Prendergast and Phil Miles, owners of Bluebird Care North Hampshire & West Berkshire, have been honoured in The Great British Franchisee Awards 2022 for improving the lives of the elderly people they serve.

With backgrounds in the NHS and in pharmaceutical sales, they joined the Bluebird Care network in 2007 and have traded successfully every year since, including through the pandemic – incredibly, without any recorded infections.

Clients remain with them for an average of 21 months, much longer than the norm.

“The last 14 years has been an incredible journey for us both,” says John. “As soon as the first lockdown was announced we were able to switch to remote working immediately.

“We had no recorded positive tests for Covid among our customers and no recorded incidences of transmission between our Care Assistants and their customers.

“We relaunched our live-in care service in June 2020 with a healthcare focus, and we’ve grown in a year from five live-in care packages to 26, with a total of 51 customers receiving the service at some time over the year.”

Bluebird Care delivered bespoke shoeboxes with festive treats to customers who were not seeing family at Christmas due to restrictions, and one customer who loves to see birds in his garden was given a bird feeder and bird food.

The Great British Franchisee Awards recognise franchisees’ exceptional performance and business experience, ability to drive business growth, staff retention, customer satisfaction, community involvement, inspired leadership, and franchise involvement.

The awards are run by whichfranchise, supported by Lloyds Bank, BDO, AMO Consulting and Chantry Group.