One of the joys of being a homecare franchisee is sharing celebrations with your clients.

Kam Gill, franchisee managing director of the Walfinch office in Oxford says: “Our client Joan Shewry recently celebrated her 100 ^th birthday – and we were delighted to share it with her. We know all of our care clients well and are always delighted to see one of them reach 100. Our whole team sent congratulations to Joan.”

Son David, who looks after Joan with help from the care team at Walfinch Oxford, says: “Joan really appreciates her Walfinch carers. All of them are good, though there’s a special place in her heart for Teresa – she always put a smile on mum’s face!”

Carer Teresa Caboz says: “Joan is a lovely lady who likes pampering and feeling cared for. She’s very polite and nice. It’s an honour to care for her.”

Kam says: “Once of the most rewarding things about being a Walfinch franchisee is getting to know our clients and hearing their stories.

“Walfinch’s paperless technical systems and franchisee support mean you have more time to enjoy celebrations with your clients and care team.”

For decades, Joan was a familiar face to Oxford shoppers. She started work as an apprentice at Webber’s, a grand draper’s shop that traded for 60 years from an imposing building close by the Oxford  Covered Market. 

“Webbers was patronised by many of the leading figures of the day, so you had to be very smart,  polite and efficient. As an apprentice I began by collecting items for dressmaking and tidying up, picking up pins dropped by assistants who were fitting clothing, and fetching supplies from the stores,” she recalls. 

Later she worked at Butler’s, a large store on the Cowley Road, where she worked in departments including fruit, cake and general household goods. When she went on to work at M&S in Cornmarket Street, she was promoted to supervisor.

Unafraid of new technology, Joan later worked for Unipart in the early days of computerisation. “I worked in data preparation, punching information into reels of paper tape, which in those days were used to feed data into computers,” she says.

Joan was also to be found walking her beloved dogs, Dinky, Monkey, Dinah, and Toksy. “Toksy was unusual – a cross between a Border Collie and a Chow, who came to us as a puppy from a farm in the Lake District, where the family took holidays. Because the puppy was cross-bred it was no good as a working dog with sheep, so we adopted it,” Joan explains.

Kam says: “It’s people like Joan who make being a Walfinch homecare franchisee so fulfilling.”