Starting a care business is hard enough. Two Radfield partners passed the hardest test there is

Every new business runs into hard moments, even with an established franchise behind it – recruiting the right people, earning trust in a new area, getting to grips with systems that are new to you. Few of those moments carry as much weight as a CQC inspection. It’s not a test you can talk your way through. Just an owner, their team, and the people they’re caring for, being judged by someone with no reason to go easy on them.

June brought that test to two different Radfield offices, and both came back with the same verdict: Overall Rated “Outstanding”.

Sona Bharkhada opened Radfield Home Care Leicester East, Groby & Oadby in 2022. Her Outstanding rating this year made her office the first private domiciliary care specialist across Leicester to achieve it, and inspectors didn’t just praise the service – they highlighted it as an example other providers could learn from.

Akash Raja was going through much the same experience at Radfield Home Care Loughborough, Charnwood & Melton Mowbray. His office, which now supports more than 45 clients, was rated Outstanding on its first-ever inspection – the only provider in Loughborough to hold that rating. Inspectors highlighted the relationships people had built with the team, the trust they’d developed, and the difference that made to the care they received.

Here’s why this matters

Sona and Akash weren’t just exceptional individuals and business owners in their own right, they were both building from a model designed to support exceptional care, while each creating a culture that reflected their own leadership.

That’s really the idea behind the Radfield model. Only around 3% of home care providers in England ever achieve an Outstanding rating nationally – yet a third of all Radfield offices inspected so far have been rated Outstanding, and every single one of the rest has come back as Good. None has ever scored lower. Radfield’s network was also named Most Outstanding National Home Care Group at this year’s Home Care Awards. It’s a level of consistency most of the market, franchised or independent, simply doesn’t match.

Two reasons that consistency actually matters. The first is personal: it’s the question most of us would ask if we were looking for care for a parent or a loved one – what standard of care would actually be good enough for them? The second is commercial: in a market where families are comparing providers, an Outstanding-rated office can almost guarantee a place in the top three of a family’s shortlist, often as the only Outstanding-rated home care provider in its area.

Radfield gave Sona and Akash the framework. They built the culture that earned those Outstanding ratings, each in their own way, in their own community. Of course, Outstanding ratings don’t happen automatically. They come from the combination of a proven model, the right support, and an owner who cares deeply about the service they’re building.

The question worth asking yourself isn’t really about Sona or Akash at all. It’s what your version of that inspection report might look like a few years into building something of your own.

If you’re wondering whether you could build something like that yourself, let’s have a conversation. No pressure and no hard sell – just an honest look at whether a Radfield Home Care franchise could be the right fit for you.