Doing Care Better: Chris Clark’s Vision for Jasmine Healthcare

For Chris Clark, Jasmine Healthcare has always been about more than just running care homes. Shaped by the very different experiences of his beloved grandmothers in their later life, he set out to create care homes where high standards of care, a homely environment and valued team members go hand in hand. More than 20 years later, Chris’ personal conviction continues to guide Jasmine mission and the plan for the future.

Named after a happy childhood home he grew up in, Chris started Jasmine in 2004 in a deeply personal mission to improve upon what he had seen his family members experience in care.

Having trained as a chartered accountant and worked in the City for 9 years, Chris ultimately never felt fulfilled by the city’s often meaningless money-driven culture and aimed to start a business of his own with a meaningful purpose. At the time, both of Chris’ grandmothers, whom he was very close to, were living in elderly care homes – but their environments were very different.

Described by Chris as “incredibly homely”, one of his grandmothers, May, resided in a care home in the village Chris grew up in. Having been an old rectory, the building had plenty of character, with around 25 beds for residents. Running the home was a fantastic team, who knew every resident by name and who you’d often hear laughing or singing. May had had a difficult life, having been widowed in the war and then having brought up three boys in an unhappy marriage thereafter. But now, in her later years, she was loved and supported in this care home, often visited by her sons and grandsons, including Chris who has fond memories of his visits.

“Genuinely, I would say the 10 years she had in that home were among the happiest of her life.”

Despite this however, May’s health deteriorated, and she was moved into a nursing home. In huge contrast to the home from home she had previously enjoyed, Chris remembers this nursing home have been “horrific”.

“It was like going back in time, like a Victorian asylum, it was awful. Some residents were sharing three to a room, a thin sheet separating them. Truly awful, and heartbreaking.”

Chris’ grandmother May experienced the very best and very worst examples of elderly care in the UK at the time. It was this experience that would drive Chris in his mission to provide high standards of care to as many elderly residents as possible.

Chris’ other grandmother Irene had a different experience still, having had access to more funds meant she stayed in a more up-market care home. Chris noticed something very different about her experience.

“It was just like a Marriott Hotel.”

No amount of bells and whistles could transform this sterile environment into a home. Irene received good medical care in a clean environment but ultimately, Chris recognised that there is so much more needed to ensure an elderly person isn’t just living but thriving. Despite the luxuries, with an unhappy team and a lack of warmth in the home, Chris still describes Irene’s time in this care home as “the worst 10 years of her otherwise very full life”.

Ultimately, these three very different experiences at three very different care homes all lead Chris to the same conclusion:

“I can do this better.”

The Team

Each experience of each of his grandmother’s care homes led Chris to his most important conclusion, one that sits at the heart of Jasmine’s mission today.

“People are fundamental. Ultimately, what made my grandmother’s experience so fantastic in that first home was the team.”

Central to Chris’ outlook in care is that if you look after your team within the home, they’ll provide excellent care to residents – the profits will look after themselves later. A happy team leads to happy residents.

“If your team are miserable and walking around with glum faces, the residents aren’t going to be happy. The team won’t be chatting; there won’t be the interaction and the fun that’s needed in any home.”

This rings true at Jasmine today within our mission:

“By prioritising our people, our mission is to provide the highest standard of care to as many elderly residents as possible”

To achieve this, huge amounts of investment are put into every team member from the day they join Jasmine. Countless incentives and bonuses are available to recognise their hard work, training is both encouraged, rewarded and fully funded, team members are assessed by not only the standard of care they provide but also the environment they create within their team, and promotions are given when a team member is ready, not just when a position becomes available. Teams are never left under-staffed to avoid agency costs – if someone is absent, Jasmine covers that team member with another team member if possible (offering generous rewards for doing so) or agency if needed without hesitation. If you work hard at Jasmine and you provide the highest standard of care to our residents, you will be rewarded – which ultimately benefits our residents.

“People vote with their feet; if you value good team members, they’ll stay – that’s great for residents and that’s what’s most important. That’s why team turnover is one of Jasmine’s core aims and measures of success”

Many of Jasmine’s values revolve around ensuring an environment of psychological safety is maintained. Elderly care environments need people to feel safe enough to speak up about issues they see before they cause harm to residents or team members. Jasmine’s Support Hub plays an important part in this; rather than a head office that invokes imagery of an ivory tower, each team member in the Support Hub has ‘support’ in their job title – People Support, Recruitment Support, Maintenance Support – as they’re there to support our care teams to provide the highest standards of care to our residents and be their support system when issues arise. Additionally, great effort is made to ensure multiple channels are made available to all team members where they can raise concerns safely and anonymously, helping to keep our residents and teams safe.

In Chris’ experience, when social care environments neglect their teams across multiple levels, standards begin to drop as they begin to pick their battles and learn to accept what they think they cannot fix. Jasmine wants to change that by valuing its people and promoting open communication at all levels.

Getting Started

Jasmine’s first home was an old rectory just like his grandmother had stayed in, based in Ewerby near Sleaford. Purchased in 2004 with a substantial bank loan secured by a deposit saved up from his years of working long hours in the City, St Andrew’s started off with just 28 beds. Having been somewhat aged and dilapidated, Chris set out to refurbish and extend the home from the outset, with extensions and ensuites being added over the years. Further improvements are still being planned today, with a hairdressing salon set to be built in the coming months, and thereafter, a new lift, an updated kitchen and characterful additions to our residents’ living rooms.

Chris remembers the early days of his first care home fondly.

“I talked to all the residents when I did my visits. The owner was only required to visit at least monthly, but I was going most weekends while I was still working by “day job” for the first few years, just to talk to the team, the residents, talk to the relatives and get their views too. I loved that and missed this enormously as Jasmine grew.”

At that time, Jasmine was run out of St Andrew’s, among the residents. It was only when Jasmine purchased the following two homes that Jasmine got its own head office (soon named the Support Hub), and it’s aims and values were written in stone.

Mission, Aims and Values

Running care homes has not always been sunshine and rainbows for Chris and he’s run into his fair share of problems. In the early days of one of the care homes’ journey’s, despite his best efforts in fostering an environment of psychological safety, Chris was surprised to find the team weren’t speaking up about their concerns, including senior members of the team and the home manager at the time, compromising the care provided. Upon finding these issues and working to resolve them, Chris put pen to paper.

“I made the mistake of assuming everyone knew what our values were, and why they were important, but that wasn’t always the case. Having them written in stone meant everyone knew the expectations, including to communicate openly, effectively and honestly.”

Today, Chris ensures Jamine makes consistent efforts to embed our values across our homes. Through training, workshops, newsletters, competitions and appraisals, our day-to-day activities throughout Jasmine revolve around them.

“I wanted them to be real, not corporate buzzwords on a piece of paper or on a wall. Everything we do at Jasmine revolves around our mission, aims and values. We live and breathe them.”

Some people, however, are just not meant to work at Jasmine. We could have our values blasting through the speakers of the homes 24/7 Pyongyang-style and they would never fully understand or embody them. But the expectations are there and can’t be argued with, helping to ensure Jasmine recruits and retains the right people.

Finding a Jasmine Home

As Jasmine has continued to grow, it now has six care homes in total, stretching across the East Midlands from Brigg in North Lincolnshire down to Oxendon, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire.

So, what makes a Jasmine home?

“It has to feel homely. Somewhere with a garden or landscaped space for residents to look out onto and use. We want it to be characterful or have the potential to be with additions like wood cladding and landscaped gardens. It takes a lot of expense, time and care but it’s worth it.”

What to avoid is also clear, particularly when it comes to the number of rooms.

“Never more than around 50 beds, as I believe care homes cannot feel homely and the home manager cannot know everyone intimately much beyond this point. Larger homes have to start segregating the home, dividing people down into units or wards, like an institution or a hospital, rather than a home. Home Managers and teams cannot possibly know every other team member or resident once you go much over that number; limiting resident numbers helps build that sense of togetherness, of being one big team.”

Furnishing the homes is also an important step in building that homely environment, from avoiding vinyl flooring in bedrooms and choosing carpets instead, to installing bathrooms with fixtures that don’t look too institutional, all the way down to picking easy to open door handles that don’t resemble those found in hospitals.

These choices cost more money than the alternatives, both to install and to upkeep, but you wouldn’t choose to live in a hospital because it’s easier to clean, so why should our residents? Additional costs like these are worth it if your goal is ultimately to provide the highest standards of care in a homely environment to as many residents as possible.

Moving Forward

In recent months, Chris has taken a step back from the day to day running of Jasmine to focus on the company’s growth, in turn handing the reigns over to Hayley Thompson, Jasmine’s new acting Managing Support Director.

“It’s been really, really difficult. It’s not easy to pull back after 20 years. My identity has been woven into Jasmine, into its values, and through my grandmas. But I want Jasmine and its mission and values to outlive me.”

Hayley is undoubtedly a safe pair of hands for Jasmine, easing Chris’ worries. With senior leadership experience in the social care industry, in compliance, and in providing high standards of care, Hayley has unwavering commitment to Jasmine’s mission, aims and values and is already taking Jasmine from strength to strength.

Looking forward, Chris aims to support Hayley with her leadership, encouraging her and her leadership team to be bold in prioritising Jasmine’s people, and in growing Jasmineresponsibly with further acquisitions and modest extensions. In the new year, Jasmine is set to announce an exciting change to its ownership structure, designed to ensure Jasmine stays true to its mission and values as it grows by ensuring leadership decisions are made by those who see our teams and our residents every single day.

“It’s really exciting. We’ve got some fantastic people at Jasmine dedicating themselves to our mission, and to be able to reward them for making the lives of our teams and residents better is a great feeling.”

For Chris, Jasmine’s future is not about simply owning more homes; it is about offering care and companionship to more elderly people without losing the homely feeling, high standards of care and the values that have inspired him from the beginning. By investing in its people, empowering future leaders and keeping our residents and teams at the heart of every decision, Jasmine is preparing to grow in a way that honours that which Chris set out to achieve more than 20 years ago: to do care better!