It’s not easy to entrust the care of an elderly or sick relative to someone else. Going through the process of finding a vetted caregiver to look after your family can be frustrating, administratively difficult and time-consuming, as you browse through CVs, call references, and hold interviews to work out if this person is the right fit for you.
The Care Hub understands the struggles that people face when trying to find a trustworthy caregiver for their loved ones. Over the years, there has been a decline in the number of informal caregivers – usually family members who can look after other family members. The Care Hub bridges the gap between families and experienced caregivers – connecting families quickly with willing community members.
Mona Moldovan, founder and CEO of the Care Hub, explains: “Our platform connects families looking for trustworthy caregivers with older women who are trained and vetted by us.”
The Care Hub trains and checks out older people living in the community to see if they could be caregivers for local families. After going through a rigorous training process, these people can provide a valuable service for the community at large.
This provides an outlet for elderly people, who can often feel alone and forgotten by society. The Care Hub leverages social media to reach their customers, and has already linked many elderly caregivers with grateful families.
When Mona Moldovan heard about the Go- To- Market Launchpad training provided under the AAL2Business programme, she thought that it would be ideal to help The Care Hub to grow.
The Go-to-Market Launchpad provides dedicated training and coaching on how to better present a business in a clear and convincing way that would catch the attention of investors, customers and business partners. Through this course they learned how to see their project from an outsider’s point of view, and how to best present it to attract attention.
For Mona, one of the most valuable features of the course was that she could have an open discussion with both their mentors and other participants and to take on board any suggestions and changes that should be made. They learn how to bounce ideas off one another and to collaborate. They were surprised by how open and transparent the other participants were; Mona found “they learned as much from them as from the mentors and the other experts involved”.
Mona was “highly impressed by the pitching event, both by the quality of the participants and the fact it was a real pitch, there was nothing rehearsed about it”. The pitching event brought about an expansion opportunity for The Care Hub, as they made contact with a potential partner from Slovenia. This was one of their initial targets, so it was a great win for the business!
Mona would encourage others to take part in the Go to Market Launchpad. The advice she would give to others is to “enjoy the whole programme, it’s really outstanding and to keep their minds open to suggestions”. With the help of mentors and coaches the programme enabled the future success of Mona social enterprise. Not only is The Care Hub helping families in need of qualified and trustworthy care givers, it’s also providing older people with a worthwhile, rewarding work.
