Jane and Ella's friendship
The deep friendship between company directors Jane and Ella is the driving force behind Northern Lifetime.
The two met in 2001 while working for a previous Case Management employer and immediately hit it off; bonding over their similar outlooks and appreciations of family, humour, travel, music, and a good night out.
Ella lives in Northumberland and Jane in Sheffield, but they overcame the tyranny of distance through short stays at each other's family homes, and by hooking up for work meetings in York (midway-ish between their two cities).
The Concerto Cafe (below) became a favourite rendezvous spot, away from kids needing attention, dogs barking and the like. The meetings were partly informal supervision, but also were good opportunities for chewing over work and wider ideas.
Continuing with the tradition, Jane and Ella used York as the base for a business strategy meeting in late 2022 - though as the cafe has since changed ownership and name, they had to find an apartment with a kitchen table big enough to accommodate copious cups of tea and papers peppered with Post-it notes.
Family is extremely important to the pair, and York aside there have been numerous visits to stay with each other's families over the years.
Speaking of their families, Ella is married to Terry and has two teenage girls and one delinquent dog called Elvis, and Jane is married to Pete, with two teenage girls and two dogs.
And like all great friendships, theirs is pebbled with happy reminiscences, sometimes of when things didn't quite go to plan.
There was the day they failed to find a 'hidden beach' in Northumberland, which Ella says "...was reached via a twisted path that opens up after a forest and was always a bugger to find".
There was also the day Jane had to sew Ella into her wedding dress at the last minute - all done with the minimum fuss you'd expect from two case managers.
And there was an infamous recovery-through-easy-listening music day early on in the friendship when Jane first stayed at Ella’s. It followed a 'rock night' with a few drinks that culminated in air guitar sparring and the realisation that everyone was getting on rather fabulously.
And there was an infamous recovery-through-easy-listening music day early on in the friendship when Jane first stayed at Ella’s. It followed a 'rock night' with a few drinks that culminated in air guitar sparring and the realisation that everyone was getting on rather fabulously.
The two have always been there for each other, whether that be attending a graduation or making early visits soon after the daughters were born. On the travel front, Ella visited Jane during her placement in Stockholm, and later there was a trip of a lifetime super holiday in the Cape Verde Islands for mutual big birthday celebrations.
It's true that Jane and Ella are very different in many ways, but they share the same values and humanist non-judgemental approaches. As Ella puts it, "We share the same belief system, but not the same operating system".
For sure, Ella has an ability to remain calm however difficult a situation, she is self-contained and resourceful, and enjoys report writing and constructing carefully crafted pieces of work. Jane on the other hand is probably more direct and thrives on personal contact and supervision. Phoning someone in a crisis comes naturally - "I'm on it straight away" Jane says.
This awareness means that Jane and Ella are very accomplished at working together in a way that makes the best use of their strengths.
And when it comes to business matters, the two say they learnt a lot from the past, "through good experiences, but also through bad ones" regarding how they would like to run their own company.
Once they recognised the need to do things their own way they branched out with their own little business and haven't looked back. In fact Northern Lifetime has grown into a fully-fledged thriving Case Management company with a dozen staff members and indirectly employing over 100 support workers.
"Running Northern Lifetime has made our friendship stronger", says Ella, "Though we are usually on the same page, we spent hours on the phone talking it through and working things out, and would never leave where one of us is upset or unhappy".
Both agree that running their own company is a "massive responsibility", but one that is made possible by the strength of their partnership, and far better shared.
Sharing time together will always be precious. Their ideal meet up outside of work would be "over a nice meal or at a lovely beach". To prove it the above picture was taken at one such nice meal when Ella recently joined Jane's family for a birthday bash at Sheffield's funky Cutlery Works.