Caremark Franchisee Reveals Expansion Plans

This growth is due to increased demand for its wide range of services from both the publicly funded sector and privately funded clients across the Barnsley area. The demand for care at home is an option more and more in demand, with a recent National YouGov survey showed 92% of people over 50 questioned said they would prefer to be cared for at home than in a residential home.

The office currently provides 1,650 hours of care each week to 125 people living in Barnsley and the surrounding area and they are planning to increase this to at least 2,500 hours by the end of the year.

In order to achieve this growth, the preferred provider of care for Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, needs to increase its staff team from 110 to 185, creating 75 new jobs for local people over the next 12 months.

Franchisee Varghese Thomas said: “There is growing demand for home care services especially as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in the mortality rate being highest among people aged 80 and over.”

“Being at home over the last year has been safer than anywhere else so we are getting more enquiries from people who want to remain in their own home but need support to enable them to do this.

To meet this demand, we are looking to grow the number of care hours we provide by at least 30% throughout the rest of 2021, but obviously to do this we need to recruit the staff who will help us deliver this care.”

The support Caremark (Barnsley) provides ranges from simple things such as helping with meals and household chores, through to supporting people with more complex care needs, such as physical and learning disabilities, dementia, and autism.

Varghese added: “Our care and support workers have worked on the frontline throughout the whole of the pandemic, ensuring our customers can remain living as independently as possible in their own homes.

It’s a job which is not always easy, but which is immensely rewarding, providing the opportunity to have a real, positive impact on people’s lives at a growing organisation that genuinely cares.”