Newcastle Home Care

The Co-operative Loan Fund helped an employee-owned care provider to smooth the financial highs and lows of rapid growth.  The workload and staffing of Newcastle Home Care Associates (NHCA) doubled since it successfully re-tendered to provide services to the local authority in August 2012.  It is contracted to provide 2,600 hours of care a week.

NHCA is also one of just two care providers in Newcastle to have secured a place on the new End of Life framework which has just been introduced.  This is expected to result in additional work.

The total number of employees has increased from 60 to 152 (both full and part time) in the last 12 months.  The staff will benefit directly from the success of NHCA because it is employee-owned.

NHCA, established in 2006, is one of several employee-owned home care enterprises set up to replicate the expertise and experience of the highly successful Sunderland Home Care Associates.

Linda Robson, Manager of NHCA, said: “The loan has been a great big help.  We’re doing more work but the money doesn’t come in at the same time as we need to pay our staff.”

Ian Taylor of The Co-operative Loan Fund said: “Employee-owned home care businesses are a beacon of best practice in a sector that has a reputation for poor working conditions.  We are pleased that we have been able to help Newcastle and some of the others with loans to help them grow.”