Homecare Independent Living

Firstly, may I thank Mairead and Gerald for the opportunity to work for Homecare.

Prior to joining Homecare I have worked in Healthcare for over twenty years operating in both senior Sales and Financial roles.

For 20 years I lived in London and loved every minute of it, primarily due to the many Career opportunities that major cities presents and more importantly this is where I met my wife, Julia.

Having spent my formative years growing up in Coleraine the lure of being close to the our fantastic coastline was something that I always wanted to return to and 5 years ago my family returned to Northern Ireland settling in Coleraine. I have two daughters, Ellen and Lilly, a dog and a rabbit. Since joining the company in September 2007, I have begun to closely examine how Homecare are positioned to meet the future challenges.

Our main challenges centres around our staff and service users.

Homecare is committed to reviewing pay andconditions, benefits and rewards and have engaged a company called Price Waterhouse Coopers to assist us as we examine how best to move forward.

Secondly, we need to work more closely in the delivery of care to our clients and our growth experienced over the last two years has resulted in a review of our current organisational structure and I look forward to meeting our care assistants in their regions to discuss how the changes will impact them.

I want to work more effectively at the point of care and to do this Homecare needs to improve our Management Information systems and we have embarked on a procurement process which we hope to conclude by the start of March 2008.

Homecare is a fast growing company, committed to entering new markets as demonstrated by our move into Supported Housing or which we have achieved accreditation and this is the first of its kind to be given to a private company in Northern Ireland.

We are committed to offering our clients the quality of care we would wish to see our loved ones receive. Moving into new markets offering more services will create further opportunities for all staff.

Homecare has a record of developing staff either through achieving educational qualifications such as NVQ or by developing careers through the services and support we offer our clients.

In order to achieve this Homecare is working on developing the future direction of the company and part of this process involves projecting where the company will be within the next five years. We will share the outcome of the review with our staff as there may well be areas of their experience that may assist us as we continue to move forward.

I believe I am accountable not only to the directors but all staff who work for Homecare and consider that the true success can only be achieved by us all working together to play a vital part in delivering the care we want our service users to experience.

I look forward to meeting and

working with you.

Bryan Meldrum

General Manager