THE owner of an outstanding-rated care company has retired after almost two decades of looking after scores of frail and elderly people in the dale.
Middleton Care Ltd owner Yvonne Metcalfe entered the world of social care in February 2002 at the prompting of a friend. A year earlier she had been given notice of redundancy by GSK where she had given 31 years of service.
It all began when Joan Lee Shield, a senior carer for Middleton and Upper Dale Care, decided Mrs Metcalfe would be an ideal replacement for a colleague who was leaving the team.
Mrs Metcalfe said: “I was very sure I could not work in care but she badgered me at every opportunity until I agreed to shadow her one weekend to prove she was wrong.
“After visiting the very first patient on that day, his parting words were, ‘thou’s done a bloody good job lass, tho can come again’.
The second visit of that day was to a 100-year-old woman who was nearly blind and had written her first book in her nineties. She never stopped smiling and never had a grumpy word, Ms Metcalfe said.
She added: “By the end of that first day after meeting and helping some amazing people I was completely hooked and knew I wanted to get involved,”
Mrs Metcalfe spent three years as part of a team of ten, working for the founders Dr Peter and Rosemary Lowe. In 2005 they offered her the opportunity to buy the company, which she jumped at and renamed the firm Middleton Care Ltd.
She also took on Mrs Lee-Shield’s daughter, Denise Coll, to run the administration.
Mrs Metcalfe said: “She is also a whizz on a computer and she built the office structure while I did what I do best, working with people.”
Under her leadership the company grew to its existing team of 28 carers looking after 62 clients in Middleton, the upper dale, Lartington, Barnard Castle, Startforth, Staindrop and Cockfield.
Mrs Metcalfe’s daughter, Louise, and Mrs Coll’s sister, Marie Scown, also joined the team to manage the company as a two-family business.
Of her greatest achievement Mrs Metcalfe said: “In 2016 we were awarded a Care Quality Commission inspection rating of outstanding, which we were thrilled to receive.
“But we did not rest on our laurels and we were thrilled again in 2018 when we were awarded overall outstanding again.
“Less than one per cent of companies achieve this rating and we have done it twice consecutively. We are bursting with pride.”
Mrs Metcalfe leaves the company in the capable hands of her daughter and the two sisters. She retired on May 1.
