Jannicke Ive is the founder and managing director of A Family’s Best Friend, a Lancashire-based domiciliary care provider for children and adults with disabilities. In September 2022, A Family’s Best Friend won the Small Business award at the Enterprise Vision Awards, which recognises women in business across the North West. Jannicke shares her own inspirational Lancashire woman in business story.
We provide care at home and in the community for children and adults with disabilities. We provide person centred care packages and focus on supporting them to live the most independent lives they can. We are becoming known as a small company who can handle complex packages and train our staff to a high level accordingly.
I saw a need that was not being fulfilled. Parents and carers were given care packages but there was no one to fulfil them. Especially for the more complex young people. We support adults now to ensure our service users are supported through transition to adult services.
Taking on more staff to be able to provide care for more service users and taking on bigger packages. We have some excellent staff and their contributions make us who we are as a company.
Also now I have a deputy manager and admin and finance support, which has enabled us to improve the care we provide to staff and service users. Also allowing us the space to grow when we recruit more staff.
Supporting some of the families we have through crisis and enabling them to stay together, or supporting the parents and carers to make hard choices for residential placements for their family member. We have won two awards recognising these areas.
Peninsula HR have been invaluable in supporting us to manage staffing problems and keep our employment documents and polices up to date. Also the Growth Mentor programme provided through Boost which is supporting us to look at our finances and how we move forward through the cost of living and supporting our staff to be paid the best wage we can.
I don’t want to let the families down we support. They rely on us for support and I am proud of the way we have supported them. I can’t see myself working for someone else and there isn’t many other people doing this job and I know we are valuable in the care sector. The need is so high and I would love to employ more staff and help more service users and families.
Ask for help. I didn’t for a long time and it’s really hard to go it alone. I have also recently joined a registered managers support group on Facebook and this has been great for offering advice from people who are going through the same as me.
We feel like we are alone but we aren’t. There are people out there who want to help. You are invaluable to society! www.afamilysbestfriend.com
Would you like to see your business grow? So would we. To speak to someone from the Growth Hub about business support, contact Boost online or call 0800 488 0057.
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