Our Small Business

Beneath Our Branches, You’re Always Home

Coral Tree In-home Care is a small, family-owned caregiving agency based in Newport Beach, California.

Since 2010 we’ve helped more than 500 older adults and their families throughout Orange County – Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Newport Coast, Huntington Beach, Irvine and neighboring Southern California communities – live safer, happier lives.

From left: Del, Cynthia, Donald, Finn, Cassidy, Christina, Natasya & Sari

Family Roots, Caring Shoots

Family has been at the heart of Coral Tree since we started the business in 2010.

It was how Cassidy cared for her parents and uncle that inspired Donald to think a move into the world of home care was possible. (The 2007-2008 Great Recession and housing collapse forced our family and thousands of others in the West Coast lumber and wood markets to start over and think big.)

Kate had recently moved back to the States from Sydney where she’d worked for Buddhist nun Ven. Robina Courtin (and before that in San Francisco), helping run various charitable projects. She was eager to help support her parents in this new family venture.

For Cassidy, having devoted much of her life to caring for her mother, father, and uncle, as well as helping look after older neighbors and friends, Coral Tree was, in many ways, simply continuing what she has always done: help others.

Together We Grow

In 2020 Del, who’s been an indispensable caregiver and friend to Coral Tree (she was the very first caregiver we worked with!), started helping with scheduling. (You can read a short “gratitude” piece Cassidy wrote about Del here.)

The following year, Sari, who’s worked with us a caregiver since 2016, started helping with all the various administration and HR duties we need to keep up with all of our caregivers home-care-bureau-compliant.

Also in 2021, Cynthia, who’s been part of the Coral Tree caregiving team since 2018, and is a home health aide, started working as a scheduler, and also as a care manager, helping oversee our friends’ care and supporting our caregivers in their work. Cynthia is now also studying for her LVN.

CT Team — Clockwise from bottom-center: Del, Natasya, Sari, Cynthia, Christina, Finn (Chief Paw-fficer of Coral Tree Canine Operations), Cassidy, Donald, Kate

Natasya, a friend of Sari’s, came on in 2023 as our office manager. Natasya ran a local in-home care business for eight years and has years of caregiving, organizational, long-term care, office, and in-home-care-related experience. Natasya also oversees the care management of a number of our friends.

And, also in 2023, our long-time friend Christina joined us as a care manager. We’ve known Christina (as have so many of our friends) from the 30 years she worked in Dr. Storch’s front office on Newport Blvd — an ever-comforting voice on the phone and first kind face you’d see as you walked through the door.

In January, Marta, one of our long-time caregivers, who has years of caregiving, care management, and organizational experience also joined us as a care manager. TEXT…

We are so grateful to this wonderful team that enables us to continue to offer a personalized level of service to our friends and their families.

We are also always, of course, incredibly grateful and indebted to all of our Coral Tree caregivers — without whom our services would not be possible. We are so grateful for all that you do.

(In the “Our Friends, Family, and Caregivers” section of our blog you can read various tributes to our caregivers that we’ve started sharing in our newsletters.)

Coral Tree Care Philosophy: Nurturing & Neighborly Care

Cassidy (right) with our dear friend, Fritzie.

Now going into our fourteenth year in business, Cassidy’s commitment to caring for others continues to be at the heart of what we do. It is her personal interest in others: in their stories, lives, and history that is the foundation of how we try and connect with and care for our clients.

Ours is a human-centered (rather than condition-centered) and client-centered model of care. It’s a very personal thing to have people come into your home and personal life – and it’s often a time of great crisis in our clients’ lives when we first meet them. It’s Cassidy’s sensitivity and care that we try and bring to each client, family, and situation

Each of us brings different skills, ideas, life and business experience to this small business we’ve built together.

We understand first-hand the challenges faced in caring for aging loved ones. We also understand how vulnerable older adults become in their later years.

We all rely on the kindness of family, friends and community throughout our lives, and yet more and more in our modern world, so many of our elders end up isolated and alone. We understand the struggles that children, spouses and family caregivers face in caring for aging loved ones. We also empathize with the pain and struggle that our seniors without local family or support face. We understand, and we are here to help.

A Canopy of Support over the Years ~ We Also Get by with a Little Help from Our Friends

Donald’s sister, Julia, at the birth of her second granddaughter, Iona, in October 2022.

We’ve had the support of many kind friends, family, and colleagues over the years.

Donald’s sister Julia, who worked as a nurse and also as a caregiver, and was a dedicated hospice volunteer at St Luke’s in Cape Town, offered advice, resources, and endless enthusiasm for our work since we started Coral Tree in 2010. Julia passed away on December 23, 2022 in Cape Town from complications related to lung cancer. Her strength, loving nature, and sensitivity to others will forever be missed & will always remain a part of the work we do.

Our friend Father Sean Condon offered a prayer for the success of Coral Tree in 2010 — his first miracle he likes to joke!

Sally Keener, nurse practitioner, FNP-C, who we’ve known since we first moved to Newport Beach from South Africa in the late 80s, helped us for years on cases that required a medical perspective. Sally received her Bachelor of Science and Masters in nursing from Indiana University and has extensive experience working with the elderly, having practiced nursing for over 40 years.

Kathy Carchidi, a friend of Kate’s, who started The Village in San Clemente and now works for Alzheimer’s Orange County, helped us as a care manager in 2017. A social worker, who’s been a passionate advocate for the elderly her entire career, Kathy helped us expand Coral Tree and make meaningful connections with other like-minded people and organizations in the Orange County in-home care world.

Our friend Karen Li… TEXT

Our long-time family friend Nick Dance… TEXT

Our friend Sterling Miles, who runs San Diego Home Caregivers, has been a great support to us over the years.

Since 2018, Arnoud Smits in the Netherlands, has overseen all of our website and print design.

Christina’s son, Nate, helped get our online filing system up and running, scanning thousands of documents and getting them organized on our new “cloud” filing system — another Coral Tree miracle!