A Dorset home help service is celebrating ten years in business – by promising to keep calm and carry on.
Southbourne-based Domestic Angels has been taking care of everyday business and making life easier for its clients since January 2002.
“This is very special work, we’re very privileged to be invited into people’s homes to help them,” says owner Samantha Acton.
“We don’t rush in and out, we go about the job calmly and without fuss. That’s the approach that has worked for the last ten years so there’s no reason to change it for the next ten years.”
Peggy McCarthy is only too ready to agree. She was one of Domestic Angels’ original customers from 2002 and has enjoyed the Angels’ help ever since.
“When we moved home they even came with is and when I was in hospital, the Angel visited with Sam,” says Mrs McCarthy.
“I’m in a wheelchair most of the time so we have an Angel to do the housework – my husband does all the cooking and the washing – but the service is somehow more than that, it’s a bit special.
“For instance, I have a collection of patchwork quilts and periodically they have to be taken out, turned, folded and replaced. It’s not something I’d let just anyone do, but the Angel has permission to do that.”
Eric and Zena Keyworth also speak highly of their Angel, Janet, who has visited every week since April 2010 and been an Angel in the Southbourne area for nearly ten years.
“We couldn’t ask for anything more,” says Mrs Keyworth. “I am a long term cancer patient on top of the gradual deterioration of everything else and in the last few months it has got so that I’m no longer able to do the housework.
“When you have someone in your home you not only have to like them but you must trust them and Janet is like one of the family – she is more of a carer than a cleaner. She makes a real difference to our lives.”
As published on seekernews.co.uk
