Del, Aonghais, Cynthia, Kate, Donald, Cassidy, Sari, Megan & our new office manager extraordinaire Natasya!

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

Since 2010 we’ve helped more than 455 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.

Kate & Donald at San Onofre.

Family

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 (and Donald, Kate, and Aonghais!), 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.

Megan, Maverick & Aonghais.

Our Small Business Grows

We were delighted when in 2018 Aonghais and his wife Megan decided to move back to Newport from Sydney, where they lived for the last decade, and join us.

“We are so happy to be back in the States and to be able to do meaningful work that really makes a difference in people’s lives,” says Megan.

A graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Aonghais worked for Personal Trust, a financial services company in Cape Town for four years, before moving back to California to get his MBA in Business Science at Chapman University in 2006.

In 2008 he and Megan moved to Sydney, where he worked for Intercall, State Street, and other financial service industry companies. In Sydney he also co-founded Care Nation, an Australia-wide online caregiver network and resource.

Megan grew up in Arizona and attended Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego where she played collegiate volleyball. After graduation she began a career in software sales; and it was her job offer at Intercall which took her and Aonghais to Sydney in 2008.

From left: Del, Aonghais, Cynthia, Kate, Donald, Cassidy, Sari & Megan during Thanksgiving 2021.

In 2020 Del, who’s been an indispensable caregiver and friend to Coral Tree since 2010, started helping with scheduling. (You can read a short “gratitude” piece Cassidy wrote about Del here.)

In 2021, 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.

And, 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 care manager (like Cassidy and Megan do), helping oversee our friends’ care and supporting our caregivers in their work.

We are so grateful to these three for their support in enabling 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.

A Better Kind of Care

Cassidy (right) with our dear friend, Fritzie.

Now going into our thirteenth 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 little family 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.

We Get by with a Little Help from Our Friends

Cassidy & Sally

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

Sally Keener, nurse practitioner, FNP-C, who we’ve known since we first moved to Newport Beach from Cape Town in the late 80s, helps us on cases that require 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 35 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.

Donald’s sister Julia, a nurse who lives in Cape Town and works in hospice, has helped with advice, resources, and support since we started the business in 2010.

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

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

Some of the friends we’ve been blessed to have the support of over the years:

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  Sally (here with Cassidy)

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  Julia, Donald's sister who lives in Cape Town

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  Cynthia

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  Sari

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  Del

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  Finn & Maverick

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  Kathy (& Kate)

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  Arnoud

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  Karen