Caring At Its Heart

Kare Plus is a rapidly expanding multi-service healthcare franchise

Kare Plus is the UK’s most established multi-service healthcare franchise. Operating within a booming industry, Kare Plus has witnessed exponential growth in recent years and its UK franchise opportunities are quickly being snapped up.

With nursing shortages, NHS cutbacks and hospital turnaround times making regular appearances in the media, franchise owners have decided to turn to Kare Plus to enter the healthcare industry at a time when private healthcare services are increasingly in demand.

There’s a host of healthcare franchises out there, so why choose Kare Plus? Alongside a proven business model and established national network of over 70 branches, Kare Plus also offers a multi-service, multiincome franchise opportunity covering a wide array of healthcare services - making it a healthcare one-stop shop.

Kare Plus doesn’t just offer domiciliary care services, nursing supply and healthcare recruitment. Its franchise owners also have access to medical staff supply, specialist and nonspecialist nursing, supported living, home care, critical care and much more.

Beginning with healthcare establishment staff supply, franchise owners have access to a number of national framework contracts held by the organisation, allowing them immediate earning opportunities.

Without this, lengthy waits without income can occur while developing your own contracts or waiting for Care Quality Commission home care registration, which can take months.

With an investment fee of £40,000 and a similar level of working capital, franchise owners have access to bespoke compliance procedures, keeping themselves, their staff and customers safe in an industry with ever changing regulations and protocols; their own business development manager helping them with recruitment, service development and CQC registration; as well as award winning marketing support, including innovative social media recruitment packages, easy access marketing material portals and their own website, all of which help their new Kare Plus territories flourish.

History

Kare Plus was established in 1989, originally supplying scrub nurses to hospitals in the north west and West Midlands areas. Following steady organic growth, the company experienced a takeover in 2010 when Steve Welsh purchased the business; rebranding, re-aligning and refreshing its business plan and ideology -really pushing the business forward.

Steve entered the healthcare industry after personal experiences left him with the desire to change how healthcare services were provided in the UK. This led Steve to introduce his own nursing and healthcare compliance procedures at Kare Plus, going above and beyond any previous governing body’s requirements to ensure only the highest quality of professional healthcare was provided by the company.

After the new procedures were cemented, new IT and central management systems were implemented to successfully monitor and manage all staff, customer and franchise owner needs.

All this led to the company slogan - The Caring Company - which is the ethos that still echoes throughout the network today. Franchise owners come from a variety of backgrounds - from finance, to construction, to healthcare - but all have the same compassionate, caring values that make Kare Plus much more than ‘just another healthcare agency’.

Looking ahead, Kare Plus has plans to introduce even more service offerings for its franchise owners, both new and existing; is set to invest even more in technology and IT systems to improve its franchise experience; and has recently partnered with charity Cavell Nurses’ Trust, which helps nurses in their time of need.

All of which is set to help Kare Plus build on the platform as the UK’s most established multi-service healthcare franchise, as well as continue its support of the wonderful work nurses, healthcare assistants and support workers do.

With UK territories filling up faster than ever, Kare Plus is also beginning to take its services overseas, with master franchisee and franchise owner opportunities now available in Ireland, America, Europe and Asia - a perfect indication of how rapidly the private healthcare industry is growing.

Sheel Phakey

Sheel is a triple Kare Plus franchise owner. “I first heard of Kare Plus in October 2014 at The National Franchise Exhibition in Birmingham,” he says. “My first impressions of the company were very good; they were very professional.

“I spent over an hour at the stand talking to the team, who were very open and honest. Being new to the industry I asked a lot of questions, but they never made me feel like I was wasting their time.

“The transparency inspired my trust, but their service offering is what made me decide to invest. The other franchise I was looking at was promising 18 different services, but when I looked closer it was just domiciliary care to 18 different demographics.

“Kare Plus, on the other hand, is unique in its multi-service offerings, including establishment recruitment, domiciliary, NHS and supported living. That’s multiple avenues of real income.

“I began in Chelmsford, but then Harlow became available, so I went for that one. Then Colchester came up, so my wife got that one.

“I would say I have definitely done so well because of the support team. I have spent a lot of time and effort building the business up, but whenever I contact them they always ask: ‘Have you looked at this avenue?’ which not only opens new doors, but can save so much time.

“In my initial few days, I must have rang the support team 20 or 25 times, but not once did they make me feel like I was wasting their time and, to this day, I can rely on the help and support of my business development manager, Paul Stafford, and all the key people in head office.”

Louise May

Double franchise owner Louise was attracted to Kare Plus’ nursing services.

“I decided I wanted to become my own boss and work within the local community,” she explains. “As I had never run my own business before though, I felt like a franchise model would be conducive to my aspirations. You get to be your own boss and manage your own business, but you also have a safety net.

“I decided to go into the healthcare sector and, in particular, Kare Plus because I wanted to enter an industry I had knowledge of and could talk about with a certain authority. As a nurse by profession, I could do that with nursing.

“The others all seemed a lot more straight jacketed. When I met Kare Plus, it was very relaxed and there were far more ‘Yes, you can do that’ comments than every other franchisor I had met. The fact it wasn’t based in London or down south I liked a lot too and it hadn’t Americanised its business model.

The other big difference that lit my candle was its nursing services. I’m a nurse and have done a lot of work on nurse CPD, so I had the understanding and skill set to succeed in that trade.”

Vimal and Nitesh Amin

Vimal and Nitesh are record breaking new Kare Plus franchise owners.

“After conducting our own research, it was very apparent we couldn’t enter the healthcare industry on our own,” Vimal says. “There’s a lot of paperwork and lots of legalities. You’re dealing with people’s health and caring for those who’re coming towards the end of their lives, so it’s important to get everything correct.

“Because of this, it soon became clear that a franchise with a proven business model and good support was vital in this industry.

“Kare Plus wasn’t the first franchise we looked at. Initially, we wanted to go into domiciliary care and met with many dom care franchises. Once we came across Kare Plus and its unique multiple service offering, we thought: why limit ourselves?

“We have just managed to break even in less than three months. Obviously this is great, but we’re not happy yet. It’s one of those situations where you get out what you put in. It’s not like a normal job, where you’re waiting for the clock to reach 5pm.

“If you finish before, great. If not, you finish once the work is done - that’s how we’ve had such a successful first few months.

“The reaction we’ve had to the Kare Plus brand has been really positive, which is nice to hear and reassuring. We’ve had people phone us up asking: ‘We’ve heard of Kare Plus, can I join your agency?’

“That’s when you know you really are doing a good job of it all.”