A NEW company is spearheading the provision of home care to minority groups throughout Bury.

And the aim of Intercare Employment Agency is to ensure care assistants are aware of the Muslim culture and can speak the required languages.

Intercare, which is offering its services to local authorities and other agencies within the home care sector, is the brainchild of businesswoman Riffath Yasmeen.

Combining 12 years of social work, training, experience and business studies, Riffath initially had the idea to establish her employment agency in 1997.

She said: "We are a young company looking to fill a very specific community care need.

"Our intention is to set up an agency providing qualified care assistants who are also skilled in the specific requirements of the minority group.

"Our initial focus is on the Moslem, Pakistani community. Later, we shall expand the agency to cover the needs of other ethnic groups." Riffath added: "Our belief is with careful recruitment and training of carers, we can provide a more cost-effective solution to local authorities and a more effective one.

"Local authorities using the agency will be able to reduce the cost of translation in dealing with ethnic groups, lessen the load on qualified social workers and achieve a higher standard of satisfaction in the community.

"We also wish to fulfil every local authority's achievable expectations of Equal Opportunities. By putting it into practice, Intercare shall be assisting black people to help themselves to reach their own goals."

The Walmersley Road-based agency is able to provide fully qualified outreach workers to people who speak English as a second language and the service is aimed at providing home care to the elderly and adults and children with physical and learning disabilities and mental health problems.

Riffath went on: "Our hope is to create a stable, self-sustaining business that is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the sympathy and standard of care to ethnic minority groups."

Throughout the past 12 years, the businesswoman has harnessed a vast amount of training and experience with the elderly, children and families, people with mental health problems, the learning disabled and ethnic minority women within residential, day care and fieldworking settings.

This led Riffath to analyse what she perceived as "the lack of resources for ethnic minorities."

Her experience has assisted her to target home care services in the community for frail minority people who do not speak English as a second language.

She has identified that providing ethnically similar people to carry out the work is "a lot more productive," benefiting the consumer, service purchasers and those involved in the outreach work.