Don’t Wait for Care with Vanessa Carr

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

And Welcome back to answers for elders radio. Everyone, we are here with a very special guest, a wonderful lady by the name of Vanessa car at care at home of Washington. Vanessa, welcome to the program thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here. We are excited to have you because you are locally owned and I am a big, big, huge, huge supporter of locally own and independently managed home care agencies. I’ve talked about this forever on the air yes and I found you and I’ve learned, I’ve done a lot of research on your company and, you know, it’s great to have you here in the studio because you guys are the kind of agency, Home Care Agency, that I strongly support in you know and how you treat seniors and what you do, and so I’m just so glad you’re here to talk about home care for families that you know maybe thinking, maybe it’s time. I’m not sure what it all involves, etc. So tell me a little bit about carrot home of Washington. Well, that’s my pleasure. Thank you. We’re worried about families that wait till the last minute to try to get care and we are celebrating over twenty five years in business here in the Greater Seattle area and people could be prepared for the future, HMM, by creating their future. Even People Think, Oh, I’m okay for now, I can help my mom or dad or seems to be doing all right. We encourage people to a call or even call some of the local services. King County services are now called sound generations right, and they have a huge list of services and opportunities for programs and involvement in the community. I would welcome anyone to give us a call, even if they’re not ready yet for home care. We’d love to start educating and sharing what the services could be. Well, and what I always say, and this is what I say to families, and I’ve said this on the air before, so our listeners are probably going here she goes again. But you know, this is really kind of a no brainer. But I always tell families engage a home care agency. Do your research, interview home care agencies before you need them, because one day mom might wake up with a really bad flu or dad might have a, you know, a broken ankle. You just don’t know, and that’s the last thing you want to be doing is then having a parade of people come in and sit there and talk to them about their services. You want to be able to pick up the phone and say, you know, I need to call care at home at Washington right now and make sure that you’ve got some help. And that’s the thing. It’s like it doesn’t cost them a thing. You’ve the families a thing to be able to interview you and say, you know what, these are the things that dad likes, these are the things that mom likes. You know she has a little challenge getting out of bed in the morning. These are the things and I think that helps you guys build a much quicker report. I amily right, and a lot of times we even have families that will get everything all set up just in case they need help. Exactly exactly, because a lot of times when we get those first phone calls, it’s when that little train wreck happened, somebody took a fall, or it’s a postoperative type of surgery that they needed extra care for, or we get phone calls sometimes and the families are kind of like, Oh my God, the hospital, the doctor said mom can go home tomorrow. We thought it would be next week sometime, and we’re all they and mine. Yeah, and they want to release you as soon as possible. And you know, they here’s the other thing. It’s like a lot of times mom or DAD will go into respite care or Rehab situation from the hospital and then they all of a sudden say, well, you’ve got one week left and you have to have help. You know right, and you’re scrambling at that point. And and just to be a little bit mindful, that says, you know, mom and dad, they’re getting up there. I just want to make sure that we have a plan in case something happens, and so, you know, to give a call to an organization like yours just say, you know, mom and dad aren’t ready yet. They’re fully, you know, independent, but we just want to make sure that we know what the next plan is and they, you know, to meet you and to get get to know what your philosophies are so that they can have a plan of you know, there’s it and helps your your loved one, your senior loved one. Know that. Oh, I’ve already met Vanessa. I know who she is. It’s okay, you know, absolutely putting a name to a face and and getting getting ahead of the game. Sometimes to have a familiar face is important and we do offer free consultations, you know, even sometimes after regular work hours around the weekends, if there’s some some urgent situations that have arisen, and also they can meet with our care givers as well without any obligation. That’s awesome. We want to make sure that everybody’s feeling comfortable with who they might be hiring, because you’re asking your parents or your loved ones to open up their home, I mean and there’s a lot of fear and paranoia about letting strangers into the house. But that’s why family should go through reputable home care agencies or get a good referral from someone they’ve known who’ve had home care before. Exactly exactly, and you know, one of the things that I checked on you is, you know, your social media feedback is wonderful, great. You know you had, you’ve had a lot of people come back and say how amazing you are. So tell us a little bit about some of the services that you walk great. We can do everything from a Onehour bath visit to full on twenty four hour care, around the clock care and of course, everything in between. We have a threehour minimum. That one hour bath visit right or and we can really custom design that plan of care for families. That’s wonderful. So and so you could come, you know, once a week, you could come, you know, twice a week, you could come every day right, ending on what they need is. And if people need a driver or if they need to have their client taken to the doctor’s appointments, we can accompany them and we really custom design those, those jobs per family. Great and we are talking today with a lady, Wonderful Lady, but the name of Vanessa car she is the owner in the director of care at home of Washington. So, Vanessa, where do you serve here in the in the greater puget sound area? What is your primary coverage area? We are pretty much throughout the greater seattle proper. Well, are based out of West Seattle and we try to keep caregivers and families, you know, closely in the area so they’re not driving, especially in our lovely traffic anymore. It’s now. Do you go to the east side? Not Too much. Okay, so your primarily bell view. Okay. So how far south do you primarily go? We can go down into Pierce County, okay. So you’re so your greater Seattle and South Seattle, then some pieces of some pos, the Homesh and peers, but pretty much the greater Seattle area. And as far north you’ll do like sels in homish land wood area. Yeah, yeah, that I live in Michael Tio, so that probably would put me out little to our so you know, as far as is you talk about the threehour minimum. What would it take for a family to kind of call you? What would they expect and an appointment? Well, we would come out and sit down and go over what they’re what their story is, what their medical history is, what they’re taking a look at their food, Diet and exercise, looking at what their medical conditions are, and then we can really get down to a like, I keep saying a custom design plan of care, but we’re dealing with people with very, very early needs, maybe very early memory loss right or even end of life care. We write must like we’re in conjunction. We do absolutely work in conjunction with the hospice companies and we do a lot of dementia care. That’s wonderful. And of course, you know when people talk about home care, your non medical homecare, right, it’s considered non medical, which to me is a little bit of an insult to the industry. But in terms of you know, doctors and insurance companies, non medical just means everything up to nursing, right. So we don’t have our ends, we don’t have occupational therapists and physical therapist, but we have everything from home care companions, Home Health AIDS, certified nurses AIDS. So we do have to have a level of training and we are monitored and regulated by the State of Washington Department of Health. That’s important. And of course, what you do help is what we talked about a lot here on the show with it, which is the activities of daily living, APSLEE in the industry call Adls, and that has to do with assistance of like what is it? Bathing, dress, saying, helping to you know, just brush your teeth, the helping you take a shower, to go to the bathroom. You know what? Tell me a little bit about that. Do Laundry, don’t you? Absolutely, lighthouse keeping, you’ll probably walk a pat for them. Absolutely, and I kind of joke sometimes with my families to say, well, we oftentimes take better care of our plants than we do our parents. And when you come to looking at feeding and watering right. So I tell my families, have you looked in the recycle bien? Have you looked in the refrigerator to see, you know, what they’re eating and how they’re cooking things? So I really have folks focus on good nutrition, enough liquids. Dehydration is a huge problem with the elderly. Absolutely, and getting them mobile, getting them up walking, even if it’s just doing loops around the house, but but staying active and staying stay mobile. I again joke with people saying do your physical therapy before it’s a prescription. Sure, sure, and that’s important too. It’s like, I think a lot of time seniors they sit at home and watch TV and they lose their mobility and they lose their ability. You know, their mind starts to go because they don’t have that social interaction and you know, just to have somebody come into the house and and say let’s go for a walk, you know it’s a beautiful day today, let’s get out and go drive to the store, all of a sudden you know mom or Dad’s world where help open up to them and sometimes it’s a little hard to get them out of the house if it’s been too many years, but we encourage folks to get to the local senior centers. I’ve even gotten memberships for the caregivers so that they can go to programs together and accompany one to all the different programs the senior centers. I could just love, love, love. That’s awesome. So, Vanessa, how do we reach you? We are located in west Seattle, but you can give us a call at area code to zero six nine hundred and thirty seven, zero zero, or look us up online on our website at care at home seattlecom. It has been such an honor having you on the show today, Vanessa, and we hope to have you back again. I can’t wait to come back. I have lots of great stories for your listeners and we love those kind of stories, so we’ll look forward to it as well. Thanks a lot. Thank you.