Carewatch

Business

Founded in 1993, Carewatch is the largest national provider of home-based care and support. It provides services to both local authority-funded recipients and private clients, enabling the elderly and people with learning disabilities or health requirements to remain independent in their own homes.

At acquisition, its branches and franchisees provided over 170,000 hours of care per week. The business now employs over 3,000 people across over 150 branches, delivering 200,000 hours of care and support to some 24,000 clients across the UK.

Market

Using our experience in the home health and social care sectors from our successful prior investment, we worked to identify new opportunities in a sector which is highly fragmented and has strong underlying growth prospects driven by demographics and a growing private-pay segment.

Strategy

The strong market position of Carewatch and our knowledge of the sector made Carewatch a clear acquisition target. We approached the owners, Nestor Healthcare, directly, completing the acquisition in October 2008.

In partnership with new management, our strategy is to grow Carewatch into the leading care provider in the UK by:

• Investing in company infrastructure and operations to drive up care standards and prime it for accelerated growth
• Increasing investment in central services and technology, with enhanced support to franchisees
• Extending services provided into mental health, home healthcare and the private pay market
• Extending the geographical presence by increasing the size of the network
• Accelerating growth through add-on acquisitions — since 2008 Carewatch has made 20 acquisitions

Developments

Below are links to interesting news items on Carewatch:

• Appointment of Andy Stevens as Chief Finance Officer (Carehome Management Magazine)
• Three franchise businesses acquired (“unquote)
• Acquisition of Always There Homecare and Four Seasons Home Care (Healthcare Investor)