City business links locals with live-in care

Tlc4u2 - how to make a mission statement with four letters and two numerals.

This is the name of a live-in home care and respite care referral agency business started by Jonathan Harris when the recession was getting nasty a couple of years ago.

A Northlander, he had been overseas for the past 17 years. One of his jobs had been working as a caregiver in the United Kingdom and when he came home he worked for a few months in a Whangarei rest home to get a feel for the local industry. He was appalled by the lack of choices for the frail elderly compared to what was available in the UK.

He set about building a service that offered care options aimed at providing a better quality of life.

This became Tlc4u2, a referral agency working with a team of about 30 carefully vetted, qualified caregivers who live-in for varying lengths of time according to need to support, stabilise and rehabilitate clients in their own homes.

Getting the business established and accepted was "a long road" but Tlc42u had turned a corner this year with turnover in the first six months exceeding that for the whole of 2011.

"We are now expanding very, very quickly," Mr Harris says.

He has taken the business to the next level recently with a move out of his home office and into hired commercial premises in the Whangarei CBD.

Tlc4u2 works closely with the District Health Board and NorthHaven Hospice to provide palliative, respite and dementia live-in care, with the caregivers working as closely supervised self-employed contractors.

Mr Harris says with demand for residential facilities predicted to rapidly increase in the next few years the government is moving in the direction of home-based care services.

"These haven't been really cost-effective but I believe we have a model which could help achieve this. One-on-one care - short-term or ongoing - can also be a real lifestyle enhancement, either by getting clients back to where they were or providing them with a comfort level that is going to make them happier.

"It was challenging getting started but this job is so extremely rewarding I can't imagine myself doing anything different now. This will be my career for the rest of my working life."