30 Years of Home Care Excellence: Twelve Trees Care's Sheffield Story

How family-owned values transformed community care across South Yorkshire

Care Where It Matters Most: At Home

When Twelve Trees Care was founded in 1996, the concept of professional home care was still relatively new in the UK. The Community Care (Direct Payments) Act had just been passed, giving people unprecedented choice about where and how they received care. The message was clear: people wanted to remain in their own homes, surrounded by familiar possessions, memories, and communities.

Simon Mills and his team understood this from the beginning. Whilst their award-winning residential care home in Nether Edge provided exceptional care for those who needed 24-hour support, they recognised that many people simply needed help to continue living independently at home.

The Evolution of Home Care at Twelve Trees

The Early Years: Building on Residential Excellence

Initially, Twelve Trees focused entirely on their residential care home. But families repeatedly asked the same question: "Can you provide this same quality of care in our own home?"

The requests made sense. Many people needed assistance with daily tasks—personal care, meal preparation, medication management—but didn't require full residential care. They wanted to remain in homes they'd lived in for decades, maintain independence, stay close to neighbours and local shops.

During this first decade, Twelve Trees began providing informal support to families in the Nether Edge area. Staff members who worked at the care home would sometimes visit clients at home, providing continuity between residential and community care. Word spread through the community about the quality and reliability of this support.

Formalising the Service: 2015

By the mid-2010s, demand for home care had grown substantially. The Sheffield population was ageing. NHS policy increasingly emphasised "ageing in place." Hospital discharge teams sought reliable community care partners. Families wanted alternatives to residential care.

In 2015, Twelve Trees formalised its home care offering through the incorporation of Twelve Trees Home Care Limited. This wasn't a corporate expansion strategy—it was a response to genuine community need, delivered in the Twelve Trees way: carefully, thoughtfully, with absolute commitment to quality.

The service covered Sheffield and surrounding South Yorkshire areas, focusing particularly on the S7, S8, S10, and S11 postcodes where Twelve Trees had built its reputation. These were communities the team knew intimately—the local shops, GP surgeries, community centres, churches. They understood Sheffield neighbourhoods, transport links, local resources.

Developing Specialist Expertise

As the home care service grew from 2015 onwards, Twelve Trees developed specialist capabilities addressing complex needs:

Dementia care became a particular strength. Staff received advanced training in person-centred dementia care approaches, understanding how to support people experiencing cognitive decline whilst maintaining dignity and independence. They learned communication techniques, behavioural management strategies, and how to create safe home environments.

Post-hospital care helped people transition safely from hospital to home. After strokes, falls, or surgical procedures, people needed intensive support to regain independence. Twelve Trees provided the bridge between hospital discharge and full recovery.

Palliative care supported people approaching the end of life to remain at home with dignity, comfort, and expert symptom management. Working closely with hospices, district nurses, and GPs, Twelve Trees ensured people could spend their final days in familiar surroundings.

Medication management addressed increasingly complex pharmaceutical regimes. Many elderly people took multiple medications daily, requiring careful monitoring and administration support.

Meals on Wheels launched as a complementary service. Home-cooked meals prepared in the award-winning care home kitchens were delivered to people's homes—not just providing nutrition but also offering a regular wellbeing check and friendly contact.

The Modern Service

Today, Twelve Trees Home Care provides comprehensive support across Sheffield and South Yorkshire. The service has earned CQC Good ratings, reflecting independent validation of quality. More importantly, it has earned community trust through consistent excellence since 2015.

The COVID-19 pandemic tested home care services like never before. Staff faced difficult decisions about personal risk whilst supporting vulnerable clients. Twelve Trees home care teams demonstrated extraordinary dedication—the stories of carers parking streets away during snow and ice to walk to clients' homes reflected a culture where care genuinely came first.

What Makes Twelve Trees Home Care Different

Local Knowledge, Local Team

Unlike national home care franchises operating across multiple regions, Twelve Trees remains deeply rooted in Sheffield. The management team lives locally. Care staff are recruited from Sheffield communities. Everyone understands the local area intimately.

This local knowledge matters practically. Carers know the best routes, understand local transport, can accompany clients to familiar shops and community centres. They recognise local landmarks, share memories of how neighbourhoods have changed, connect with clients through shared community identity.

It also matters relationally. Staff might shop at the same Waitrose, attend the same church, recognise the same local landmarks. This creates natural connection impossible to replicate with transient staff or distant management.

Continuity of Care

Industry statistics show that care worker turnover often exceeds 30% annually. This creates constant disruption—new faces, repeated explanations, lost relationships. For people with dementia especially, constantly changing carers causes anxiety and confusion.

Twelve Trees has built something different. Many home care staff have worked for the organisation for five, ten, even fifteen years. This stability creates genuine relationships. Carers know clients' preferences, routines, histories. They notice subtle changes that might indicate health concerns. They provide not just professional care but genuine companionship.

Flexible, Person-Centred Approach

Twelve Trees home care packages are genuinely tailored to individual needs:

Visit duration ranges from 30-minute welfare checks to two-hour comprehensive care sessions, depending on requirements.

Visit frequency adapts to need—once weekly, daily, multiple times daily, or overnight support.

Service timing accommodates personal routines—morning assistance getting up and dressed, lunchtime meal preparation and medication, evening personal care and settling for bed, or any combination.

Care plans are reviewed regularly and adjusted as needs change. There's no pressure to fit into standardised packages—services adapt to the person, not vice versa.

Integration with Residential Care

One unique advantage: seamless integration with Twelve Trees' residential care homes. If home care becomes insufficient and residential care becomes necessary, families already know and trust Twelve Trees. The transition is smooth rather than traumatic.

Conversely, people considering residential care can try Twelve Trees' day care services first, experiencing the care home environment before making decisions. Or they might use residential respite care to give family carers breaks whilst maintaining their home care package.

This continuum of care—home care, day care, respite care, residential care—means Twelve Trees can support people throughout their care journey, whatever their changing needs require.

Digital Care Systems

Twelve Trees has invested in Person Centred Software, a digital care planning and documentation system. This technology:

The Challenge of Modern Home Care

Industry-Wide Pressures

Home care faces significant challenges across the UK:

The Twelve Trees Advantage

Against these challenges, Twelve Trees home care maintains several competitive advantages:

Staff retention dramatically reduces recruitment costs and enhances care quality. Long-serving staff know clients, understand local area, require less supervision.

Local focus concentrates operations in areas the team knows well, reducing travel time and maximising care time.

Reputation provides steady referral flow from GPs, hospital discharge teams, and word-of-mouth recommendations, reducing marketing costs.

Financial stability from family ownership enables investment in staff training and competitive wages.

Quality premium allows rates that cover costs whilst maintaining standards—families choosing Twelve Trees prioritise quality over cheapest rates.

Looking Forward: The Future of Home Care

Growing Demand

Home care demand will continue growing inexorably. The over-75 population will increase 55% by 2050. Policy emphasises community-based care. People overwhelmingly prefer ageing at home. Technology enables more complex care at home. This creates substantial opportunity for quality providers.

Twelve Trees' Vision

For Twelve Trees home care, the future builds on nearly a decade of formalised service excellence since 2015:

The core commitment remains unchanged: enabling people to live independently at home with dignity, support, and genuine human connection—the same principle that guided Twelve Trees when they began informal home care support in the early years, and that drove the formalisation of services in 2015.

Why Home Care Matters

Home care represents more than convenience or cost-saving. It represents dignity, independence, connection to community and identity. It enables people to age in place, surrounded by lifetime accumulations of memories, relationships, and meaning.

Since formalising services in 2015, Twelve Trees has provided this essential service across Sheffield—not as corporate transaction but as genuine care rooted in community. Staff who live locally. Management who understand Sheffield. A family business committed to the long term.

This is home care done right. Care that genuinely starts with real connection. Care delivered by people who care. Care that enables people to live their best lives, in their own homes, for as long as possible.

After thirty years since Twelve Trees Care was founded—and nearly a decade since home care services were formalised in 2015—Twelve Trees Home Care remains as committed to these principles as Simon Mills and his family were from the beginning. And for the thousands of Sheffield families who have benefited from that commitment, the impact is immeasurable.

About Twelve Trees Home Care: Twelve Trees Home Care provides professional care and support across Sheffield and South Yorkshire, enabling people to remain independent at home. CQC Good rated, family-owned, and trusted by Sheffield families. For more information about home care services, visit www.twelvetreescare.co.uk/home-care or call 0330 1649 900.