More than 70 percent of family-owned businesses do not survive the transition from founder to the second generation.

Such was not the case for Taniella Jo Harrison, executive director of Westbury-based Tri-County Home Nursing Services (TCHNS). The family business began through the efforts of Taniella’s grandmother Ella Ferguson, a registered nurse who owned several businesses including Odyssey, the first black travel magazine. In 1981, Ella founded TCHNS as a private duty home health care agency with $500 in seed money. “My grandmother was an icon,” Taniella says proudly. “She was compassionate and caring and the best diagnostic nurse you could ever meet. She took care of patients in her home. She was not only a nurse, she was an entrepreneur.”

In fact, Taniella was born into a family of high achievers. Her father, Bruce Harrison, was an architect on the World Trade Center. Her mother, Linda Cunegin, is now president of TCHNS, and Taniella’s younger sister Giana Harrison serves as assistant executive director of TCHNS. “We are like the three musketeers,” Taniella says of her relationship with her mother and sister.

When Ella Ferguson died unexpectedly in 2002, Taniella was employed as a grants manager at Girl Scouts of the USA and Linda was working as an urban planner in Florida. Taniella and Linda had to think fast to keep TCHNS operating while they sorted through Ella’s affairs. At the time the agency consisted of about 35 employees. They also had to make sure that patients were cared for and the employees paid. “I was doing the day- to-day [operations] while my mother was giving me direction,” Taniella remembers. “My grandmother had one computer. We had to get [the business] networked and make big operational decisions, all within a few months. We had to make the necessary changes in technology and HR. There was no marketing plan. It was a sole proprietorship and we had to incorporate. It was a struggle at first,” she remembers. “For four years my mother was going back and forth [between Florida and LI].” Now, Taniella and Linda have grown TCHNS into a fully licensed, insured and bonded home healthcare agency, offering people an alternative to placement in a health-related or skilled nursing facility.

“The trend of nursing homes is on the decline because baby boomers are taking care of their parents. Home care is more affordable,” Taniella said.

Taniella is also the secretary of the LI chapter of the New York State Association of Health Care Providers, Inc., an organization that represents the interests of all home health and staffing organizations in the state, and is also very active in Tuskegee University alumni sorority Sigma Gamma Rho.

“We’re now one of the biggest minority-owned agencies on Long Island,” Taniella says. She is also the youngest female home health care director on the Island that now employs a staff of 180, including 155 home health aides in the field and 18 full-time and part-time administrative workers at their Westbury headquarters.

Taniella says with pride, “180 people. That’s major growth and a whole change in everything. While we were growing the business we hired the right people for the job. Everybody here takes caring [for others] seriously. We are a family and we work as a team, for the betterment of our patients, aides and ourselves.”

For more information, go to www.tchns.com, call 516-997-1208 or e-mail Taniella at tharrison@tchns.com.

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