MANY of us will spend our twilight years in a r e t i r e m e n t home but Glenn Pickersgill had the unusual experience of growing up in one.

He fondly recalls coming home from school and playing cards with the residents that he came to regard as members of the family.

“My grandma, Annie, started the business in Darlington in 1955, and my mum and stepdad (Marion and Jim) took over in 1970.”

As the third generation of Pickergills to work in the care business Glenn is ideally placed to talk about an industry that has attracted a barrage of bad publicity in the past two years.

Darlington was at the centre of the storm as operators based in the town – Castlebeck Care and Southern Cross Healthcare – both collapsed.

“Those debacles obviously affected people’s confidence in the sector,” said Glenn, who joined the family business in the 1980s, while owning a care home of his own, Harewood Lodge, in Darlington.

“I have seen huge changes.

Back then, local authorities ran about 90 per cent of the services and now they run only ten per cent, with the private sector being the main player.

“But the fundamentals of looking after someone with dignity and respect haven’t changed. Whoever runs the home, they are the most important things.”

What would be the first thing he’d look for if he was checking out a care home for one of his elderly relatives?

“I’d take a glance at their rota to see how many staff they have on duty. That would give you a pretty good idea about how things are being operated. In the homes I ran it was all about attention to detail. For example, I had a lady tell me she that was putting her mum with us because we had cloth table napkins.

For her that was a sign it was somewhere with certain standards. If they had been paper napkins she’d have walked away.”

Glenn’s parents retired in 1995 and the business expanded rapidly under his stewardship.

In 2006, he sold the business to Supreme Care Homes and Supreme Home Services.

But the lure of the industry was strong. In 2008, Glenn and his wife, Sally, launched Heritage Healthcare which focussed on providing carers to help people enjoy independent lives in the comfort of their own home.

Demand for homecare is expected to rocket. There are ten million people in the UK aged 65-plus – one in six of the population.

The latest projections are that this will increase by 5.5 million in the next 20 years and nearly double to about 19 million – one in four of the population – by 2050.

Glenn added: “The trend now is for people to stay in their own homes for as long as possible. The most recent figures suggest about 70 per cent of people want to do that rather than go into a care home.

“From our point of view we are developing a service that builds a support system to allow people to stay independent for as long as possible.”

The company recently launched a franchising division and is looking for people who have the desire to own, operate and develop their own business with the guidance of Glenn, Sally and directors Michelle Fenwick and Amanda Jackson, who have more than 50 years’ combined experience in the homecare sector.

He explains: “We have an indepth understanding of the market and we are very quality orientated.

“As a result we will be able to offer the experience, knowledge and training needed to enable entrepreneurial individuals to develop a successful homecare business, based on an established model.”

Glenn is a keen golfer and for the past 11 years Heritage Healthcare has held a charity event at Blackwell Grange Golf Club, Darlington, which has raised more than £128,000 for St Teresa’s Hospice, in Darlington.