How franchisee Sarah climbed the care career ladder
“I love care,” says Sarah Wickham – and it’s powered her career from care professional to care business owner. Sarah now runs her own business as the Walfinch home care franchisee for the Suffolk Coastal area and is opening a second Walfinch franchise in Norwich.
Twenty years ago, Sarah, from Blythburgh, near Southwold, was working as a live-in carer and personal assistant.
She fell in love with the care industry and decided to make it her career, going on to run a care home where she managed a team of nurses. She is still a member of the British Nursing Association, which she joined in 1996.
From the care home, she moved on to manage a local office for a national care company. “They told me to run it as if it was my own business, so I did, and we won their branch of the year award 14 years running,” Sarah says.
However, when the company was taken over, Sarah decided to move on, and took a job with a much smaller domiciliary care agency. “I soon realised that if the agency owner could do this, so could I,” says Sarah.
She began thinking about running her own business. “I had loved the feeling of being part of a bigger company but enjoyed being able to make my own business decisions, so I decided a home care franchise would provide the combination of business ownership and being part of something bigger,” she says.
Now Sarah has a team of over 50, and the expansion into Norwich means she will be recruiting more. Walfinch Suffolk Coastal recently achieved a ‘Good’ rating from industry regulator the Care Quality Commission.
Having started as a care professional herself, Sarah knows what life is like for her team and uses her knowledge and skills to support them as well as clients.
“My experience of providing care in people’s own homes and care homes has given me invaluable knowledge,” she says. “Even after more than 20 years in the care sector I love the variety that each day brings and I am still passionate about delivering care with empathy and compassion to the local community.”
Sarah is a living example of how to climb the care career ladder. The number of jobs in adult social care will increase by 27% to 480,000 to reach around 2.27 million by 2035, says Skills for Care.
That means plenty of career opportunities, and they are open to people with no previous qualifications – which is rare today. People who stay within the sector and show the right aptitudes can progress quickly to become senior carers and Registered Managers, for whom pay ranges from £30,600 to £41,800. They could even go on to run their own care businesses, like Sarah.
“Provided candidates show the right qualities and aptitudes we don’t look for previous care experience or qualifications because we provide training and career development, but whether they want to be care professionals or franchisees, they must pass The Mum Test,” says Amrit Dhaliwal, Chief Executive of Walfinch. “When recruiting we always ask ourselves, ‘Would I be happy with this person looking after my mum?’ If so we may well be able to work together.”
Walfinch is also introducing a scheme that incentivises staff to stay and eventually become franchisees by reducing the £27,000+VAT franchise investment fee by 10% for each year (up to a maximum of five) that a carer remains in its team. By year five the investment will have dropped to £13,500 – and the carer will have invaluable experience of how the system works.
Sarah says: “Care has been a great career for me, so I know the unique rewards that a care career offers.”
