--- title: "Scaling Care With Heart" episode: 198 date: 2026-02-26 guest: "Amrit Dhaliwal" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/198-scaling-care-with-heart audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-198/audio.mp3 --- # Scaling Care With Heart Joanne Lockwood speaks with Amrit Dhaliwal, CEO of Wolfinch, about what it takes to scale high-quality home care without losing the human connection that makes care work effective. Amrit shares how he entered the sector, what he learned from running a franchise as an “outsider”, and why he believes home care can be redesigned through a purpose-led franchising model. Together they unpack the structural barriers that keep care provision unstable, including how local authority commissioning and short visits undermine consistency for families, providers, and care workers. Joanne brings the discussion to life with personal experiences of navigating domiciliary care for family members, highlighting the real-world gap between what is commissioned and what people actually need. The conversation also explores what it means to professionalise and rebrand care work: recruiting for values, retaining and upskilling staff, and building systems that make quality sustainable. They widen the lens into prevention and “healthspan”, arguing that supporting independence earlier can reduce downstream pressure on hospitals and help people live well for longer. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome - 01:40 — From Restaurants to Care Franchise - 05:34 — Elderly Care: Independence and Support - 07:59 — Rethinking Care Sector Funding - 10:57 — Redefining Home Care Through Franchising - 14:21 — 15-Minute Home Care Concerns - 20:03 — Preventative Care Avoids Greater Costs - 21:15 — Scaling Solutions in Domiciliary Care - 25:08 — Value-Based Recruitment Strategy - 29:15 — Upskilling Unlocks Scalable Success - 32:56 — Planning for Accessible Ageing at Home - 36:28 — Care, Stigma, and Sandwich Generation - 39:55 — Building Strength for Healthy Ageing - 43:04 — Health Transformation Through Data Awareness - 48:51 — Gen Z: Health-Conscious Lifestyle Shift - 51:45 — Repositioning Perspectives on Ageing - 55:28 — Planning Life's Evolving Journey - 58:49 — Building a Values-Led Journey - 01:00:01 — Inclusive Conversations with Joanne Lockwood ## Key takeaways - The tension between archaic government contracts and the goal of sustainable, quality-driven care provision. - The importance of rebranding care work as a professional and respected vocation to attract fresh talent. - How prioritising prevention and early intervention can alleviate strain on the healthcare system and improve outcomes. - Actionable recruitment and retention strategies centred on values, genuine relationships, and long-term investment in people. - The crucial role of training, upskilling, and holistic support for care workers to deliver complex, multifaceted community care. - The shift in funding models toward private pay and insurance products, enabling greater flexibility and control for families and providers. - Approaches to drive societal change, from demystifying ageing and healthspan to encouraging personal responsibility and forward planning for later life. ## FAQs ### What is “Scaling Care with Heart” about? This episode of the Inclusion Bites Podcast, hosted by Joanne Lockwood, explores the evolution, challenges, and opportunities within the UK home care sector. The conversation unpacks how franchising models, innovation, and social purpose can drive systemic change in home care, with Amrit Dhaliwal sharing his entrepreneurial journey and vision. ### Who are the speakers in this episode? The episode features: Joanne Lockwood, the host and inclusion advocate Amrit Dhaliwal, CEO and entrepreneur pioneering purpose-led franchising in UK home care ### What inspired Amrit Dhaliwal’s venture into home care? According to Amrit Dhaliwal, home care was originally his wife’s suggestion, stemming from her background in dentistry and nursing homes. Amrit saw unmet needs and an archaic system, prompting a move from catering and restaurants to home care franchising, aiming to create scalable, purpose-driven businesses. ### Why is franchising considered a solution for home care’s challenges? Franchising enables entrants from diverse backgrounds—not just those already in care—to build sustainable, values-led businesses. This approach provides “plug-and-play” models, nurturing entrepreneurship and supporting broader impact by professionalising the role of care workers and business owners. ### What are the main problems facing home care in the UK? The episode highlights several systemic issues: Unsustainable funding from local authorities 15-minute care visits which compromise quality Underpaying care workers and undervaluing the profession Lack of branding and societal recognition compared to nursing or NHS roles Reliance on archaic business models ### How does private pay differ from local authority-funded care? Private pay allows for greater flexibility, higher quality of service, and fairer compensation for care workers. Amrit Dhaliwal asserts that private clients and providers retain control, permitting more meaningful visits and reducing bureaucracy. ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Foreign. Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share storeys that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 198 with the title Scaling Care With Heart. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Amrit Dhaliwal. Amrit is a dynamic entrepreneur and CEO transforming the UK home care through a purpose led franchising model that blends innovation, quality and social impact. When I asked Amrit to describe his superpower, he said that it is turning traditional sectors into scalable purpose led ventures. Hello, Amrit, welcome to the show. Hi, Jo, thank you for Amrit Dhaliwal: having me here. Great to be on the show. Absolute pleasure. We were just Joanne Lockwood: chatting away in the green room about my own experience in social care care homes and so through parents and parents in law. So I'm sure we've got lots to talk about. So. And you're based in London, is that right? I am, that's right, yes. Wow. Fantastic. It's nice to have someone in the same time zone for a change. There we go. Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah. Makes a change for you, I think you were saying. Yeah, it does. And Joanne Lockwood: we probably share in the same rain cloud at the moment. It's absolutely pouting down here and I think it probably must be all over the country right now. Yeah, absolutely. So, Amrit, you are, by the sounds of it, a sea, a serial entrepreneur and getting involved with many, many, many different startups and models. So what got you into the home care business and what is your. With a heart, if you like, what's your passion for this? I Amrit Dhaliwal: think, like most good things in my life, Jo, this was also my wife's idea. So we're sitting in a Cafe in 2012 and I was like, trisha, I've got lots to give and I don't know who wants it. You know, I was in restaurants and catering businesses at the time and I was working long hours and so on and the return was fine. But when I think about the time and the emotional investment, the financial reward just wasn't really there comparatively. And my wife's a dentist, her family's been in nursing homes for the last 30 odd years and she said heavy thought about domiciliary care and I was about 25 or 26 at the time and I, you know, said what you would expect any 25 year old to say, which was, what the hell is that? You know. And the next thing I know I'm speaking to all the different franchises around the country. I bought a home care franchise within, you know, 60 days of this conversation. I'm then running my care businesses and then going out to Oxfordshire for my doing that, driving three hours to Richmond where my restaurants were and so on. And this is 2012 in September I signed the contract. In November I got my care Quality Commission registration and In I think 2013, sort of February, I took my first client on and it was around March or April 2013 that I realised that this was it, this was what I needed to do for the next 20 years. I needed to fix home care, fix franchising and both of those things in the home care space in the UK were a bit archaic and I thought there's got to be other people like me that want to run businesses and scale them and just don't know how. And I felt like the market was set up very much for people that were from the sector and I really wasn't. I still see myself as very much a home care outsider, but working from within. And I've set up Wolfinch with that in mind for entrepreneurs that want to get involved in the sector but want more of a plug and play model and to help them scale. That's often the way though, isn't it? Joanne Lockwood: Many businesses are the founder is the inventor, the idea person, the creator of something. But sometimes the better businesses are run by people who are one step backwards. They're not driving from their passion of the solution, they're driving from their passion of the business itself. To create a sustainable business model that serves its customers looks at all the dynamics. Whereas the inventor mindset is too focused on the product sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's kind of Amrit Dhaliwal: both end, you know, for me the problem I was trying to solve was something else. It wasn't that I had been actually really conveniently at that time, my grandfather, my late grandfather had come over from India from Punjab he'd lived in a village that my families lived in for many generations and there is no care. You, you, you take care of your elderly and so on. But as, as it happens, all of the kids have moved away in Canada, America, the UK and so on, all in search for a better life. And so, you know, my grandfather fly over here and he spent a couple of years with us. Now that time I really got a firsthand experience on what it felt like to have elderly people living with you and how you can support them and how you need to keep people independent but still keep, keep. It's kind of a blend between independence and, and giving somebody that support. And I think that's the hard part. And I really sort of saw that firsthand and then I went into sort of thinking, well, okay, you're right, great. So I can see there's a need for this. So I become a franchisee myself to try and fix that need. And then as a franchisee I saw, well, here's a different problem. You know, the problem is actually in the systems and in how archaic the whole model is. So then I went off to fix that problem and actually that I thought was the longer term problem because actually the mission piece is finding more people like me that want to do that or more people like me back in 2012 that want to do that now. You know, when I look at it, I think in last five years I probably could have earned a lot more money being a home care provider and just scaling my own home care businesses. But I can make a lot more impact being the CEO of Wolf Inch and scaling it through franchising and going nationwide. That's interesting. Yeah. So you, you Joanne Lockwood: have the passion, but you also have the entrepreneurial skills, as you say, to, to franchise it out, to have a wider impact. So you said, well, to paraphrase you, the home care system is broken or was broken and has been broken. What were the key things in there that you identified that needed fixing right now that you tackled? There's a multitude of things. Amrit Dhaliwal: I actually wrote a book that came out earlier this year and all the proceeds go to the care workers charity. It's called Time to Thrive, the Home Care Revolution. And in that I set out a 12 step model. But I think anyone within the sector understands the way that the sector is funded is problematic. So, you know, the government's really kind of left us to our own devices. We get paid through local authority contracts, a rate that is not sustainable and is not reasonable. You know, we can't run sustainable businesses from that and therefore, and I saw this back in 2012 and I thought, well, okay, the whole market's running after these governments contracts, I'm going to run in the other direction and focus on building a private business, self funded business, which I did, went from zero to a million in that few years and really built this very kind of sustainable margins led business which allowed me to provide a better quality service because I could hire staff that were calmer, it was more sustainable, I paid them very well and so on and we were able to spend that time training them. And then if I think about that today, I mean, that problem still remains in a different way today. And then for me, I think a lot of it comes down to the way that the market is branded. And I think, well, okay, the NHS is not branded the way home care is branded. And if I think about the campaigns that have been done for nurses, we think about a nurse and think, wow, that is a really professional role and it's really supportive. But we think about care workers and there's almost a level of embarrassment saying, well, I'm a care worker and that is unbelievable to me. I think, you know, it's work that I couldn't do. It's amazing work that I think is so important. And if we think about the lockdown and Covid and so on, I mean, care workers that kept the country spinning, you know, the wheels would have fallen off. But I feel like we as a country do not do enough to kind of help rebrand that. So part of my mission is rebranding the role of the care worker, professionalising it, really dressing it up and putting it out there. And then, you know, I'm 38 and so when I talk to my friends about being in home care, they're like, what the hell is that? Come on, you know, that's so cool. And so on. And they're all in finance and this and that and all of the sexy stuff. But the way I sort of see it, I think, well, okay, well why can we not rebrand the role of the entrepreneur within this sector? This sector is operated due to and by entrepreneurs. It is not led by the government. On the whole, you know, it is very much entrepreneurs that are in the sector driving it and creating change. And so I kind of think, well, you know, when we're in the age of your Gary Vees and your Alex Amozies and, you know, your Cody Sanchez is, you know, entrepreneurialism is cool, but home care isn't yet. And so what can we do about that? And I And then that will attract really interesting talent from different sectors who will come with their own thinking and help redefine home care, which, you know, happens to be the wolf inches strap line. Because I really do believe that, I think that you can truly do that through, through the power of franchising. Because people like yourself might wake up one morning, think, gosh, you know, this would be an interesting thing to do and you come with your own skill set. Bring that here. I think, well, okay, gosh, how do we, how do we then? You know, I've got a friend of mine that's creative and, and, and he's been paramount in, in helping morph my thinking in how the brand looks and feels and so on. And, and it's just different people that can impact along the way in very different ways. Yeah, I mean I'm currently, I Joanne Lockwood: suppose indirectly through parents, a procurer of domiciliary or residential care. And you're right, we've noticed that it's frustrating, very frustrating, especially when you're dealing with local authority. You have the interviews, they tell you, yes, you can qualify for 15 minutes a day or half an hour a day. And this is what we've contracted with the provider to provide. Then we found it very frustrating and that the provider turns up intermittently, different times, there's no stability there. Elderly father in law wants a breakfast roughly at breakfast time and when someone turns up at 11, he's in the mood for lunch and he's had to make his own breakfast. And that defeats the whole object of the care because we didn't want him walking around his property with a zimmer frame, potentially tripping over or falling or knocking something or having to bend down. And so we found the actual provision of service to be very variable. And whether that's because it's a local authority funded scheme or whether we, because I believe we now have the right to opt out of this local government and take the funding and do your own procurement, which we didn't opt to do. We opted to keep it through the local government at this time. But we probably end up going through the same provider anyway. And it's, it's very frustrating as a, at this side of the fence trying to liaise the companies who are doing their best. Absolutely doing their best, juggling multiple balls, I'm sure, and people who care deeply to get it right. But from a customer perspective it's not quite there yet. Amrit Dhaliwal: And I think a lot of that comes down to the way that the government buys care. And so, you know, One of my sort of big pieces has been really moving away from that. And I think, you know, when we, on the whole, when we work with the local authority or government, we work with them in the capacity of kind of direct payments. That personal budget that you're referring to now, where we don't have that, we tend to work with private pay. And it means that both yourself as a procurer and us as a provider have control in the situation. And there's no third party that's not there. You single action. That should be 15 minutes. Gosh, what can you do in 15 minutes? You know, that should be illegal as far as I'm concerned. You know, you can't go into someone's property and do anything in 15 minutes, apart from cheque that they are there and okay, and then it's time to put your coat on and leave and it's just, it's not feasible. I mean, you know, also when you think about that, you think, well, how much is that care worker being paid to go to that 15 minute visit? Then they're driving there, they're driving back, you know, the time, the mileage and all that. It's unreasonable in my opinion, to ask them to do that. You know, unless someone lives in some sort of housing colony and there's, you know, five houses there and you're going back door to door or whatever and it's, you know, 30 seconds between houses. Okay. You know, but the reality of that situation is how disruptive for that elderly person at home thinking, you know, maybe they've got dementia, maybe they've got other, other sort of situations going on. And I think someone's rushing in, rushing out maybe. And also you cannot blame the care worker because they're trying to fit in all of these things. You can't even blame the provider. They're trying to keep a sustainable business, to keep the care workers going, keeping clients healthy and so on. And you know, but the way that the work is contracted is problematic, I think. Yeah, as providers, I think, you know, really we, we need to march with our vote with our feet and just march away from that, that, that local authority work unless it is fairly commissioned. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I was a trustee of a charity in Portsmouth seven or eight years ago and we, we as a charity provided domiciliary care. I remember we ended up having to walk away from contracts because they just weren't viable. You, you couldn't deliver and they were trying to bid 15 minute contracts almost at minimum wage at the time. And that doesn't give any Scope for travel, doesn't give any scope for time off, doesn't give any scope for training or anything else, or personal, other personal needs. And it was just unsustainable. Providers were losing money on every visit, on every contract, and they just thought. Well, and that's so reasonable, Amrit Dhaliwal: right? As a provider, you are also an entrepreneur. You might have shareholders responsibility to them as well, you know, both to provide a really good quality service, pay your staff really well, but also to enjoy dividends. As a. As a shareholder, I think there's nothing wrong or inappropriate in that. You know, it's a way that the system is all kind of curated. I think it's really important to have everyone in that system should win. You know, the carer should win, the client should win, the entrepreneur behind the service should win, you know, the community should win. And as a result, the greater economy will win. And I think, you know, if we think about it from the abundance model, I think there's. There's a lot to be said there. I actually have my own podcast called Walking With Wolf Inch and the episode's not out yet, but it will be by the time this episode's out. I had an interview with Professor Martin Green and a really interesting gentleman. He's the CEO of the Care Care England and he talks in that episode about how the NHS is funded. And actually, if we took a portion of that funding, gave it to the social care sector as a. Social care providers would be able to reduce the amount of burden that is levied onto the nhs. And actually we're talking about about a tiny proportion of that, that, that funding, but it's just not there, you know, because actually home care or care doesn't win votes, you know, and that's fundamentally where we're at. I think you said it Joanne Lockwood: earlier about the. It's not seen as a glamorous thing, is it? Nurses and hospitals somehow are vote winners and they're seen as glamorous. Well, they've been rebranded. So, you know, Amrit Dhaliwal: 10 or 15 years ago, I remember there's this wonderful campaign around the NHS and nurses. It's wonderful. You know, if you think about all of the sort of civil type services, you know, the army and so on and the raf. I mean, you see adverts on tv. Where is that for social care? You know, we are the reason that people are kept at home or out of hospital and, you know, a bed at hospital. I think the last count was. I think this number is. Has. Has gone up. It certainly will by the time this episode's out but it's over £800 a night, you know, and you think gosh, you know that is a phenomenal amount of, of, of investment from the, the taxpayers money. And, and I think. But we're able to remedy that. And also most people don't want to be in hospital. They, they, you know, most people want to be at home. Yeah, that's for sure. Joanne Lockwood: Certainly all of my parents, parents in law, I've wanted to stay at home as long as possible but it gets to a point where you just can't do it. You haven't got the accessible property, there's no, there's no help to make it accessible in some cases doesn't need to be huge amounts but you know getting a hospital bed in there or, or getting some other way or the toilets upstairs, the kitchen's downstairs. Where do you put somebody? There's, there's no stair lift or anything else in the, in the property. It's complicated. And I look at what happened with my father in law beginning of this year. He had a fall, not his first fall. He probably clumsy, he was trying to use a rollator instead of a Zimmer frame type model. He probably tipped it, it fell and it ends up in a pile on the floor, walking frame on top of him, two broken ribs and it took until the care visit later that day to find him and end up in hospital potentially they thought he was going to end up on palliative care and end of life but he managed to do an azimuth and pull it around and it got better. But I look at the time that my wife was off work with that, at the worry that we had as a family, the time I had to take off work. So we're self employed but both of us and she couldn't earn, she couldn't deliver the business. Then you think about all the time invested in the actual hospitalisation of my father in law for that 10 days, 15 days and then having to off board him out of hospital, onboarding back into domiciliary care. That whole process, the number of people involved in that, how do you have proper care at the beginning then that would have cut out all of this anguish and time from the working generation and the hospitalisation and the care he needed. So you're right, the prevention in that scenario would have been a better investment. Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah. And I think this is where my mind is really at with the way that we're scaling Wolf Inch. It's really focusing on prevention, it's focusing on where we ought to be focusing As a community, as a nation? And I think really that for me is all part of creating, creating a solution because we all know the problem and certainly if you're within the sector, you know what the problems are and we can sit and we can talk for an hour about all of the problems that are there, which is vast, or we can actually start taking some action and saying, well, okay, what am I doing differently as a provider? Am I charging enough so I can pay my staff enough? Am I. So is the local authority paying me? If they're not, am I going to focus on private pay work? And, and how do I then start to create a business out of private pay work? And actually, is there a franchise model I can get involved in? Are there coaches or what have you? How do I actually scale that to ensure that that business is sustainable? And I think that's it really. I mean, I'm very process driven and focused on results and I think it really serves itself well within, within the domiciliary care market, is there a challenge. On the supply side of the talent Joanne Lockwood: of the resources, the care workers? Is there a challenge getting people to steer as a worthy profession to invest in, or are we still struggling to get the resourcing? I think Amrit Dhaliwal: there's a few different challenges. Certainly, as we currently speak, there's been changes within the way that you're getting staff from abroad and that's problematic because that really alleviated a lot of the issues that we had in the market. It creates an increase in supply. So you've got that problem, then you've got problem on a more local market. But for me, and again, maybe I'm too simplistic, but for me, I think often the problem is a lack of activity problem. And I think if you're able to get out there enough and you are making enough phone calls and you speak to enough people, you will get a member of staff and you sort of look at a kind of sort of two to one ratio when you're, when you're looking at clients to care workers, invariably, and actually that works. Right, so you don't need lots of carers to make a successful home care business. You know, a successful home care business might look like about a million pounds in revenue with you know, maybe 40 odd clients and maybe you know, sort of 25 care workers. So it's not a huge, we're not talking huge numbers of people, but then I think the focus needs to be very much on retention of those people. So, yes, you know, my first home care business was Oxfordshire, so Very affluent area. And you know, I realised really early doors I'm not going to get tens of people applying to my job every day. And I spoke to a colleague of mine within the sector from a different brand and said, oh, so you know, what are you doing? How are you getting staff? I mean he was sort of five years ahead of me and said, well I spent about this is back in 2013 he was spending 1500 pounds a month on indeed adverts and the gosh, I don't have 1500 pounds a month for a start. And second of all, you know, he's getting 10 people in but then losing nine and then having a net growth of one. I was like this is, this has got to be something, something else. And I was talking to multiple other providers and everyone's in a similar situation, different version of. And I thought, well okay, now what? And then I sort of went back to the office and I remember looking at my, my team. So what is our difference? How do we change this? Because I don't have 1500 pounds a month and I don't want to grow by a net of one people. So how do I change this? Okay, so I'm doing all of this activity so we're going to get really focused on who we're hiring and we're going to say no a lot, which is actually unheard of within sector. And so we're going to say no to people that we've think don't want to do this are not people I would hire from my own parents. And we're just going to say no to basically 50% of the applicants that come. And so we're going to get super focused on who do we want and what is the purpose of getting this, taking this job, you know, and I really thought about that and I started doing value based recruitment and so that really helped. So that one thing alone made me get the right place. And so the right care workers were coming in and they were sticking around longer just automatically because they wanted to be there. So I didn't have that churn just from that one after. And then I thought okay, well now, so I've got care workers here, I'm not go. There's, there's an even, you know, further reduce the supply. So now they've become even more like gold dust to me. So now what? And I thought well okay, so, so now I need to, there's not lots of them. I need to get to know these people, every member of staff, you know, the dog's name and who's got chickens and how many kids have they got and what's their names? And, you know, they've just run a marathon doing X, you know, oh, someone's working in a mini field factory. Great. You get to know people and then you start to understand what motivates people. What is it? Is it money? Is it purpose? Is it the fact that they want to be at little Timmy's football match on a Wednesday afternoon? Every Wednesday. Great. You know, let's get to know these people. Because actually, if I was a consultant and I had a client that was generating £50,000 a year for me, I'd be falling over myself. I would be sending them birthday cards for their children's birthdays, for goodness sakes. A care worker who's generating the same for a business. We're like, oh, whatever. Sarah's gone, Samantha's come in. We just don't have that thinking there. And so I flipped that thinking and I said this to my core team in the office. You think I'm paying your salary? You are dead wrong. It's the coward. They are driving the whole thing. So how do we keep them going? How do we keep them in this business? And then it was thinking, well, how do I increase the supply? And that comes down to simple. Let's get out there. Let's, you know, let's do the press ups. And if we're not doing the press ups and then complaining about, I'm not getting care workers in, I don't buy that. You know, I think it all comes down to, right, let's do more work, work. Let's change your work. Let's tinker with it. Let's drive the data. You know, I did this. That didn't really work. Is it because the system open or is it a volume problem? And invariably it's a volume problem. You know, I had a, a friend of mine in the sector, he said, oh, well, I sent out 300 leaflets and nothing came back through it. And I thought, okay, cool. So. And then what'd you do, you know, all that work, Nothing. I was, okay, so have you, have you tried sending out 3,000 leaflets? And so he sent out 3,000 leaflets and he got something back from it. I was like, great, so now what happened if you send out 3,000 leaflets every day, you know, for example, and yes, and there's a budget issue and whatever, but actually. And then what happens if I'm doing that every day, but then I'm also, you know, asking those people that coming in or for their referrals and then know six months later I'm speaking to said careworks, I've been working with me and I think they're wonderful. Hey, who else do you know that is like you, that is your friend as a value set that can work for us. And all of a sudden you'll keep growing by one, two, five people. And if you can retain those people, you will develop a sustained scalable business but also you'll do something really magical which is upskilling that same person. Now what you find with businesses with a lot of churn is that they never, they've never got anyone around to upskill them. You know, they can't teach them the next thing and the next thing with medication and the whatever else it might be. But if you've got somebody that is sticking around for a five year period or you can really say hey look, you know, I've got this next course and we're doing this thing on ossipro and their diabetes and then so on and then so forth and all of a sudden five years later you've got this wowzers care worker that is just phenomenal. And they can talk to a tissue viability nurse for you and they can talk to district nurses and they can have these really meaningful conversations that historically have all been reserved for management staff. And my thinking is flipping that on its head. It's thinking why can we not give the care workers some of the most responsible work within the business? Because they are the ones that are out there the whole time. You know, the only thing stopping us is upskilling them. Yeah. I go back to Joanne Lockwood: when I was a trustee of this local charity providing dogma care. The training, the compliance, the CQC regulations, so much so that we, this, this charity even started its own training business, E Learning company because it was cheaper to build its own E Learning platform to train its staff and then sell it to other training care providers than it was to sort of outsource somebody else. Because you know, you haven't, you've got, you know, you need people trained in stoma care, you need people trained in being able to give a certain type of injection or diabetes or whatever it may be, foot care, all these other type things. So you need people who are a multifaceted rounded professionals and I think that's what we probably forget. We think home care is just incontinence or feeding or cleaning. It's the whole load of specialisms there that you have to be a nurse in a package really, don't you? You have to be able to provide all the things that you would get if you're in a hospital bed in the community, wherever possible. Absolutely. So factoring that into your care package and whatever the local government is giving you is really tricky. As you say, you're trying to change how you're funded by looking at the private sector, looking at different partnerships. So that's the challenge you're facing now, isn't it? Higher net worth individuals who are looking at premium care homes or premium at home services. Yeah. And I think as time Amrit Dhaliwal: goes on, so many people fall into that bracket and it might be somebody that was historically kind of didn't quite fall into that bracket because the thresholds have changed over time or property prices have gone up and so on. And so all of a sudden so many people fall into that bracket. So actually, and I think that'll only happen more and more over time and, and it's then about saying, well, what is the, you know, most sustainable way of doing this and what is the most fair way of doing this? You know, you've got to think, well, okay, how do I sustainably and fairly turn a profit? And I think that's what it really, it's really thinking about everybody in that kind of circle winning. Joanne Lockwood: My mother's come to terms with having spent, well two years of paying for care homes for my father in excess of £120,000, I think, in care care home costs. She's decided to invest £120,000 in her house to make it accessible. So she's building wet rooms, she's building a downstairs, she's even planning out where her bed could go in the living room, remodelling the downstairs so that she can now foresee herself staying at home for as long as physically possible with domiciliary care. Rather than having to ship herself off to a care home, sell her property to finance it, whatever she can. Now, hopefully the plan is for her to stay there till the right to the very end. And I think if people started thinking about that in their 60s, 70s and 80s, about how can they create a sustainable home environment for them and not be reliant on care homes and they can keep the asset in their property as well, all that, maybe we need to educate the population as well on how to fund these things. I think there's a lot of Amrit Dhaliwal: work that needs to be done there. I think there's probably also, we're probably at a point in time where there's more products that are needed. And one of the things I talk about in my book is about, well, okay, are there insurance products that could be product provided to people from this, from, you know, that are going through this? I mean, there's already kind of equity products with lenders that I've come across in the past and so on and we've seen some clients utilising and so forth, you know, but what else is there that would help kind of pull that plaster off and help us really just move forward from this. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And providing better training and support for relatives. And that's one thing we learned as, as, as children of elderly parents is that we were woefully unprepared for what, what was expected of us and we needed educating. You know, I, I said at the time to the, anyone who would listen that when you're having a baby, you kind of, you're in this club. Everyone, everyone knows what having a baby means. You know, you've got antenatal clients, you got lots of parenting books, you've got all these little things, you've got these little clubs and Facebook groups, but nobody has this kind of what it means to be a sandwich generation in your 60s trying to hold a living deal with your children who are in their 30s and then suddenly your parents become children again. Yes. And you've got all this navigating this care system, navigating the terminology, getting through to people, having conversations with medical professionals who seem keen to treat the physical but not capable of treating holistically the mental and the well being side. It's almost like your ribs are fixed now, off you go, there's no more deal with it. So it's education for the relatives that is also needed and I think destigmatizing the profession, professionalising it and also making it a career opportunity for many people. Then as a child, as someone who's in care, then I wouldn't feel the stigma either and my employer wouldn't know the stigma. And it's accepted that I'm going to need that flexibility and time. And people see that being a carer as something more than just fitting it in. You get maternity leave, you get paternity leave. Why can't I have care leave? Yeah, yeah, Amrit Dhaliwal: I think, I think that's absolute here. I mean, you know, and actually one of the opening gambits in my book is exactly that. You know, if I've got a PA then that's something to be proud of. If I've got a nanny, that's, that's okay. But if I've got a care worker, you know, that's something to be Embarrassed about. And I think that that thinking just needs morphing because actually more and more people are living with that, dealing with that and then thinking about a tool, you know, just a toolkit that you, Jo and, and your partner can live with. Or I think, well, okay, how do I navigate this whole very complex thing where, yeah, we, you know, you very much are in that sandwich generation of I've got both ends popping off and, and how do I fix that? How do I, you know, cope with that also emotionally, how do you cope with that? That, you know, because the pressure is, is immense as well. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And it's not just elderly, it's people of all stages of life. I, I'm, I'm also mindful of this because my, my wife had a total knee replacement two weeks ago and she got sent home, no care package. You know, she, under the Equality Act 2010, she doesn't even qualify as disabled because it's to be qualified that you have to have a disability that lasts more than a year. So having a knee replacement so she doesn't get any help with parking spaces or anything else, she has to deal with that. Crutches and zimmer frames and walking frames, whatever it may be, without any provision. And so there was no offer of someone to help her. I would have to drive her to the local surgery to have the wounds dressed and changed. Something could have been done in the community. Need to occupy hospital time to have that. So again, it's not just elderly people here, it's people of all ages who are going through having a need for dominance care, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And that's it. And that's one of the Amrit Dhaliwal: reasons, actually I've recently partnered with the Royal Osteoporosis Society and so I'm one of their business ambassadors. And it's really interesting because actually, again, we don't really talk about it as a sector that's kind of so early doors that we're not talking about it. And I think, gosh, if I think about the demographic of my staffing team, they will all be dealing with this. If not now, then shortly. A very big percentage of my team will be dealing with that care workers and management and so on. If I think about that work end client, they will be dealing with osteoporosis and, and, and it's really then saying, well, okay, so what, what can we do? Are we teaching our care workers enough? Are we partnering up enough? Are we talking about it enough? And so we're trying to raise money for them and and, and really work with them directly. So I think it's, it's really interesting the way we, where we look at that. Joanne Lockwood: We've just started talking more openly about menopause and the impact of HRT and which obviously has a huge impact osteoporosis as well, certainly in women. But I guess it must also occur to men of a certain age as well where their bone density is reducing. Absolutely, Amrit Dhaliwal: yeah. And maybe more, more money has been spent on elderly women right Joanne Lockwood: now because it's kind of linked to menopause and hrt, whereas elderly men are probably. There's no, there's no, there's no programme there, is there? People that. No. And I think, well, also there's a bit of re education that's Amrit Dhaliwal: needed from an earlier age. So, you know, I've got both of my parents who are in their early 70s, you know, lifting weights and, and really building that kind of muscle mass now to, to help that deterioration and increase bone density and work through all the supplements and so on. And it's really, it's really talking to people at much earlier age and stage when they're fitter, healthy and so on, say well, you know, what are we doing to increase bone density, increase muscle mass? You know, when we're talking about your, your father or father in law that had the fall, you know, it's, it's really then saying, well, okay, have I really worked on, in the early years on my quads, my glutes and really kind of made that strong enough because I know that after a certain age or you know, even after the age of like 40, the deterioration is going to increase, the muscle mass is going to decrease and so I'm left in a much kind of weaker position. And so if you think about how you want to be able to live in your 80s and 90s, you know, pick up the grandkids, play golf, tie your shoelaces, whatever that might look like, it's then saying, well, how much muscle mass do I need for that? And then how much deterioration am I going to have? Well, this is how much muscle mass I then need to build from where I am today. And it's, it's really kind of thinking about things in a much more scientific way. Things like getting benchmark bloodstone. You know, I've started getting into that myself now doing like, you know, selection bloods and so on, say well okay, here's my benchmark number. So I'm not looking at it in my 40s, 50s, 60s, and then saying, well, I don't Know what these numbers mean? Are they up, down, sideways, what are they? But, you know, getting a kind of a selection of things done earlier at any stage, really. The thing is really interesting because as you get older, you've got things to then pitch that against and really think about that. You know, I think. I think we. There's this great guy called Peter Attia who talks about health in a really interesting way, and he talks about health, you know, 1.0, where it was bloodletting in the mediaeval times, you know, 2.0, which is kind of what we're in. Yeah, during, you know, so. So you've got an issue. I'm giving you some medication, but we're moving into that medication 3.0, which is, you know, Wellness and Health 3.0, where we're talking about prevention in a real way. You know, we talk of prevention today, but the two things are not mirrored in terms of the way that it's delivered. Health is delivered to us and cares and supports are delivered to us from medical professionals and so on as well. It's really then thinking about getting all of that information together. I think it's closer to it in the States than it is here because there's a much more kind of privatised system around health and I think that makes the data flow better. And also there's a appetite for that kind of information, which I think there's probably work to be done in the UK at the moment which hopefully will be part of that change. Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I'm probably biassed because I had, I suppose, a bit of a life epiphany about three or four years ago, so I've just turned 60 this year and I realised at the age of 57ish, that if I wanted to stay active into my 70s, I couldn't wait until I was 67. I had to do it at 57, at least I should have done it at 47, but. So I gave up drinking, lost a lot of weight and joined the gym, go to classes now, but I'm quite data driven. I've got my Apple watch, I've got my nutrition calculator, food diary. So I'm much more conscious about my own health and well being through data points. I guess the younger generation that's coming up is used to having wearables, these technology devices. So that generation, yeah, the coming generation will be much more acutely aware of the metrics. I'm also fortunate that I do get regular bloods through my GP for various things I've had going on in my life, I get regular blood tests every six months. So I've been quite fortunate things like that have happened. But you're right, if you haven't got that benchmark, you don't know what your user needs are. Your baseline lymphocyte counts, all these kind of things. Even your hormone levels, when it changes, you don't know if it's, if it's up or down. You just know that it's different for you or you got nothing to go on. So I think, yeah, going back to the point you made at the beginning was the prevention side. This Health 3.0 is all about prevention, investment in the future. And that's got to start in our teens, isn't it? Truly, I mean, we just Amrit Dhaliwal: need to think about it. I think, you know, also just changing the way that we're educating ourselves. But, you know, I've, I've always been into lifting weights and so on. And when I was younger, it was all about the vanity and just being a big beefcake. But actually as I've got older, it's really, it's less, far less about the vanity and much more practical and thinking, well, I started in this year, really. I've been personal training quite a lot and I just feel just so much stronger as well. Just for you, going up and down so stairs and you're standing up without using anything, you just think, gosh, yeah, you know, this is, this is what I want my strength for as I get old, basic stuff. You know, I just want to be able to hold my kids for longer and walk with them further and, you know, all of that practical strength. And I think as I get older, what does that look like for me? You know, what, how do I want to live and what am I doing today to think about that? And so, you know, things like weight reduction, so on. I mean, I've been on a bit of a journey myself, you know, bit more to go. But I think again, all of these things, it takes off the burden on your ankles and your knees and so on. And it's just, you know, as long as you can safely healthy do that. I think this is, there's a lot there that as we get older, it will really help create a much more thriving stage of our life. Yeah, but I think at the moment Joanne Lockwood: it has to be my epiphany. It's not a, a cultural thing, that it's evolving. Maybe, maybe we'll be talking about it more, but it took a personal epiphany. So, you know, I bought an E bike because I realised that I had. I had a manual pedal bike and I was locked in between two hills so I could go along the bottom. But as soon as it got bumpy, I couldn't get up the side. So I bought an E bike and suddenly my world expanded. I can now do 25, 30 miles on a Sunday morning, whereas before I was doing a couple hundred yards because I was blocked in the gym. Personal trainer classes do that. And I mentioned at the beginning we've just got a puppy and I've. I look, look at the rings on my watch and having the puppy. I'm stat. I'm doing my stand count before lunchtime now because I'm getting up and doing this, I'm more active. I don't lie in bed anymore, I've got to get up, take for a walk and feed all that stuff. All of a sudden just having a puppy has created this whole new fitness requirement just to be active. So I've been very mindful around standing from a chair without support. So I always, when I get off the sofa now, when I get off a chair now, I'm always trying to kind of do this without support, just use momentum and. And I judge that as a real progress step, that I can still do that. And so, yeah, I think you're right. We have to take personal responsibility and maybe part of your business model, and I don't know if this is what you're thinking, is to try and bring people on that journey with you. So you're coming into that. Yeah, really it is. I mean, so we have, around Amrit Dhaliwal: the country we do something called Thrive Clubs, which are free clubs and donations go to the Royal Osteoporosis Society in Renbury and where people can drop in and I'll do something active, whether it's, you know, yoga or Pilates or chair exercises. I mean, heck, in some places we even do art and so on. So just kind of creative as well, because it's not all just physical. But I think really thinking about that and saying, well, what are we doing and taking to the community and actually are we starting that journey with people much earlier and really bring them on that journey much earlier and then going on a, on a, on a much longer trajectory with them. Is society changing? I mean, I look back at my Joanne Lockwood: generation and we were probably the cause of the McDonald's problem. You know, as parents, McDonald's just launching the Happy Meal. So we were probably of that generation that started causing that obesity crisis in our kids. Have we got to the end of that phase. And we're now looking at a better or we still propagating this. Yeah, I mean, you know, from Amrit Dhaliwal: things I've read, you know, articles and studies have been done with economists and so on, and also from my own personal experiences with the sort of Gen Z's or zeds or whatever they're called, the, the next lot that are coming up, I note that they are far more health conscious, they drink less, they don't binge drink in the way that was normal, you know, 10 or 20 years ago. They exercise more, far more kind of sort of aware of their health. And you think things like these AG1s and all these kind of supplements and so on, you know, there's a, there's a much bigger kind of appetite for things like that. So I think that there is a lot of that happening. I think that we are finding that things are morphing and changing. It will take time. It will take. A generation, I think, but it requires all of us to carry on doing the work. Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm one of the millions who are using Mounjaro as a partner in my, in my weight loss journey. And I see it as a partnership because it's not, it's not, doesn't do all this on its own. You've got to, you've got to want to do it and you've got to meet it halfway because if you don't put the effort in with it, it has no effect. But that's really woken a lot of the population up. That's become almost accessible to many. Obviously there's still a premium price, but that is really getting people thinking about, actually, I can now do this. It's like having a little coach on your shoulder going, you can do this, you can do this. You're paying 250 quid a month for me, you better make it worth it. I think it's in my mind, I think I don't want to keep eating the pizza and paying 250 quid for weight loss injection. So there's a whole new generation now thinking I want to take personal responsibility for my weight. And they're now buying into it. But there's still stigma around having help, isn't there? It's like, yeah, I mean, but again, Amrit Dhaliwal: I think that is changing so quickly. You know, I, I think certainly in the people that I know, I think I, I know a lot of people that are using, you know, medication or whatever it might be. And also I think that there was this wonderful article in the Economist earlier this year. It was like a six page spread and it was talking about weight loss, drugs and, and I, I thought it was really interesting because the way that they had positioned it was, was to say that over the next 20 years it will really change and it will be seen as more like diabetes or a curable issue as opposed to the way that it seems socially today. I Joanne Lockwood: think that's laziness and lack of discipline and yeah, very not true actually. Yeah, and it's just, it's just the way, way that we Amrit Dhaliwal: position it socially and I think that, you know, it's just not true actually. And, and I, I really kind of look at that and I think that's really interesting to think how drug like that will change society. And I think, well that's one of many changes that will happen, you know, and, and, and I, I just think that if we all just take our little bit and we, you know, focus on our sphere of influence, we can really make monumental change in how we think about ageing and how we think about wellness and how we think about being older. I mean, in many ways you think, gosh, if you focus on that health trajectory, you know, you are at a stage in your life where you've worked, you've, you know, accumulated whatever you're going to accumulate, you've got a house or whatever it might be, be and you know, if, and if you are fortunate enough to do so and actually you're able to live a much more kind of full life than you might in your 20s and 30s because you're in that building stage and you've got young kids and so on and so forth. And so it's a really wonderful stage of life. But I think it's about repositioning the way we look at it. And so I'm really interested in how we think about ageing in a young uk. Joanne Lockwood: I read somewhere and I can't remember the exact age, but something, I think it's something like the first person to live to 150 years old has already been born or just been born and you think, so the new generation, there'll be an expectation by definition that you will live into your 120s at some point. But what we don't want to do is live to 120 and not be fit into our 110s because what we can't have is 2/3 of the population being over 50, over 60, living in care or needing domiciliary care with the other third trying to pay for that. So we need to change our fitness and Our capability. So that adjusts with our lifespan at the moment. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to really change the conversation Amrit Dhaliwal: from lifespan to healthspan. Well, okay, how long am I healthy for? How long am I mobile and fit for and so on? And actually, you know, that, that, that health span is, you know, because we talk a lot about lifespan, don't we? And as a community and I think really it's kind of morphing the conversation and saying, well, you know, how long am I independent and happy in, in who I am for? You know, and it's, and really asking those sort of hard questions. Questions. Early doors, I think. Yeah, I mean, Joanne Lockwood: we've gone past the, the era of golden handshake pensions where people can retire at 50 and, you know, the next generation and Gen X is like me and boomers, like, like people around me, we're gonna have to keep working to our mid-70s. You know, we don't, we, we don't have the, the wherewithal now. The pension age is going to go up. Even, you know, I, I could I afford to retire at 67? Probably not. So I need to be fit and active enough to earn some kind of living to supplement any pension I have into my 70s. And that number's going to go up by five years every 10 years or whatever it may be. So we're going to need people working to their 80s. Workplaces are going to be accommodating now of multiple generations in the workplace, multiple fitness levels and multiple capability levels and we as a society can't keep ignoring that. Yeah, yeah. The NHS can't cope with it. Well, this is it and I think we Amrit Dhaliwal: really need to think about it and think, well, what is, you know, I talked to my nephew who's in his early 20s, said, well, you've got 50 years of work, you know, so, so really, you know, think about all the different incarnations you're going to have. Whatever it is that you're doing today is probably not going to be what you're doing in 20 years time and then another 20 from there, you know, and, and that's, it's also then at his stage, it's thinking about the wealth span that will feed into the health span and that will feed into the lifespan. And, you know, it's really, it's really thinking about that whole, whole journey, I think, and much, very much like a journey, you know, and I think really kind of mapping it, planning it and thinking about it, which is not something that is comfortable to do, but I think we ought to. Joanne Lockwood: But there's been an expectation that people are relying on the state to do that for them, haven't they? That's been the kind of. I suppose it came out of World War I, World War II, that sort of mentality where the state started looking after, you know, the NHS was formed, pension, retirement, all these concepts started evolving. If you go back in time, back in history, people didn't retire, they just passed away at work or they became very infirm very quickly and they weren't expected to live much more than a couple of years after retirement. Yeah, and that's, that's it. It's very Amrit Dhaliwal: true. Especially as the people who were in that zone Joanne Lockwood: were probably working class, lower middle class, probably doing manual labour, probably working in advance, that were toxic and they were developing conditions. You know, health is probably for the benefit of the wealthy and the, the privileged few, wasn't it? Amrit Dhaliwal: Yes, very much so, yeah. And yeah, we now have an expectation Joanne Lockwood: as a society that health and well being and wealth span, as you said, and health span should be the right of every person, regardless of financial status. Absolutely. I Amrit Dhaliwal: think, and you know, hopefully we will work to omit that two tier system that has formed in the uk. Joanne Lockwood: Amit has been a fascinating conversation. I mean, we've gone off a franchising and domiciliary care into sort of blue skying around health and well being, into our, into our hundreds. I've really enjoyed it. How can people get hold of you and find out more? You know, maybe you're a budding franchisee listening to this, Jo. I've really enjoyed myself too as well, thank you very much. So we're very Amrit Dhaliwal: easy to get hold of. So I'm Amrit Dallywell. I've got my book which is called the Time to Thrive Home Care Revolution, which you can find on Amazon. I have a podcast which is called Walking With Wolf Inches. All the, on all the podcast platforms on my Instagram, which is Amrit Wolfinch and LinkedIn, which is Amrit Dallywell and then the website which is www.wolfinchfranchising.com. Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. This is all in the UK at the moment. You're not, you're not going into Europe yet. Currently in the UK and you know, let's see what Amrit Dhaliwal: happens in the future. So throughout the uk. We're currently throughout the uk, yes. Yeah. So the furthest north is Edinburgh and the furthest south I think is Southampton. Oh, wow. Joanne Lockwood: I'm in Portsmouth. So. Yeah, just around the corner. Yeah. Not far. Yes. Yeah, not far. So if you're, if you're in the west country or you're in the tail end of Kent, maybe there's an opportunity there to franchise. Amrit Dhaliwal: I mean, we have, you know, we've got a wonderful journey to go on. I think we'll probably have about 40 locations by the end of this year, but we probably divide the country into 200. So there's a lovely kind of 10 year journey to go on and we're always looking for the right people to go on that journey with us. We say no a lot, but again, for the same reasons, we're looking at retention, we're looking at the right people and we're trying to build a values led business. Joanne Lockwood: Well, I'm never going to disagree with that statement. Absolutely fantastic, Amrit, thank you so much. Thank you. As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and be become part of our ever growing community driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, storeys or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood. Psych. Signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.