Home Care Relationship with Kim Spencer
Kim Spencer at Serengeti Care talks about the home car
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*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.
This is a special presentation of answers for elders with Sarah and getty care, and welcome back to answers for elders everyone. We are here with a special guest, a lady by the name of Kim Spencer, who is the Business Development Manager of our wonderful Serengetti Care, who is part of a regular part of our program Kim, I’m glad you’re back. It’s great to be back on this beautiful sunny day. Isn’t it fabulous? As weather as crazy, isn’t it it is? Love it, you know. And then that’s something I think that’s really important, as you guys do home care and a lot of times there’s a lot of you know, change is happening with seniors, as they may be are downsizing or, you know, little bit more out and about and they need a little bit more help around the house or, you know, they might be having some extra company or things like that. So one of the things that I’m a big, strong proponent of is that you always should establish a relationship with a home care provider, no matter whether you need it or not, because you never know if you wake up with a stomach flu or all of a sudden you just don’t feel good or you just don’t can’t negotiating around the house, and I think one of the things we want to talk today is, if you’re going to select a home care provider, what are the things that you should look for, Kim? Well, I think you should look for somebody that’s at first of all well established, has a good reputation, is local, not a franchise, right, and a company that is license bonded and ensured in the state of Washington. It’s very crucial that you go with a Home Care Company that does background checks and has caregivers, CNAS that are properly trained and have gone through specific training with seniors handling dementia, Alzheimer’s, that sort of thing. You know, you bring up a really several really valuable points and I’m right reminded of a story that I heard and, amount of fact, I talked about it in my book because it’s so powerful. Why? Had a daughter of a senior that called our caroline and she ended up being rerouted to me because Carolyn was like at a loss, like how can we help this poor woman? And the story was that she was looking in on her mother. Her mother decided that the lady next door that was is going to come in and start taking care of her as a personal friend. And of course the part of me, just the hair on the back of my neck, just went up because I knew, you know, the slippery slope that she was on. But because she began to tell the story, one day the caregiver that was unlicensed, uninsured, was helping mom to get into the shower. Mom got into the shower okay, but she hurt her back, the caregiver did, and as a result, of course, she ended up going the caregiver ended up going to the hospital. Next thing we know, mom gets served papers from her insurance company that said she was libel. That was it cost her mother over Fiftyzero to settle out of court, and all of that just to save a couple of books on home care, which just devastates me. And this is why everyone, you should never, never, never, hire someone that you personally know or just because their friend, because they’re going to give you a better deal, or somebody off of Craig’s list or something like that, because not only you’re opening yourself up for, you know, definitely some liability there on both sides, but the other side is is that you can certainly you know you’re not going to get the level of care and you’re really, really, really vulnerable. So, Kim, the things that you’re saying, I think, are so critical in the fact that you should go with a professional. And the other thing that I’m really interested in is why is it? And I know the answer, but I want you to share. Why should you go with the local agency over a franchise? Well, a franchise is mainly just a business and they’re really geared for money making. That’s what their primary goal is, and our goal at Sarah and Ketty, Sarah Getti care is, you know, hiring kind, caring professionals that actually enjoy helping seniors. Their whole purpose is to help seniors and families. So tell me a little bit about the philosophies of your company. Our philosophy is really giving back too seniors. So many people think that seniors don’t really have they have so many stories, they have so many things, they’ve worked so hard in their life and really give them, give them dignity, give them, you know, treat them with respect and dignity and also keep them as independent as as you can. MM, we like to keep people in their home. We bring assisted living to them, whether lit they live in a community, whether they live in their own condo or their home. We bring services to them and we just increase their quality of life. Get them engaged, get them you know, so many seniors battle depression and are very lonely and we can provide companion care and do get them into exercise classes, take them to the park. You know, in a beautiful sunny day like today, that would be nice and that’s so important because, especially if a senior is is isolated in their own home, having the ability to get them out is so vital to their mental wellbeing. And if they’re not, if they stay isolated, what will happen specifically, is that, you know, symptoms of Alzheimer’s and dementia can actually increase. So this is a really important thing to keep mom and dad, your aging loved ones active as much as you possibly can. So that’s something that I think is really important for sure. And there’s so many senior center nurse that have very engaging activities, whether it’s Tai Chi to Bingo, which is always a favorite, yes, exercise class. They also have trips on they have lunch every day and and all different types of events and and that’s the the exciting thing. So we are talking with Lady Kim Spencer from Sara and Getty Care. And Tell me little bit, Kim, about the area that you serve. We Serve Pier Snow Home Mission King counties. We have two locations, one in Renton and one in Seattle, and we cover a wide, wide territory. So we help seniors in their homes, like I said, or whether they live in assisted living community that has very minimal care or doesn’t provide care. That’s where we come in. So if I’m thinking about hiring at home care agency, what are my expectations when if, like say, for example, you come and meet with a family? What are my expectations of what’s going to happen in that appointment? Well, we really have a good heart to heart conversation see what what they expect, what the client expects, what the what the clients needs are right, and we try to match a caregiver with those needs right and really come up with a good care plan. That’s important, very much so. And then is there a certain like minimum that you have to you know, the number of hours that you have to pay for if somebody comes in. I mean, how do you work with your pricing? Our minimum is four hours, which is pretty standard. Hmm, across the Bulls that four hours a day or four hours a week. It could be four hours a day, it could be four hours a week. It’s just a four hour time slot, okay. And then it’s twenty eight dollars an hour, which that’s very reasonable, very so. So what you’re saying is is, let’s say you know. Again, coming back to the whole thing, I think we need to do another conversation about really wise and important to to make sure that you establish a relationship with a home care agency. But let’s say mom or dad weeks up with a bad stomach flu and you have to go to work, you know, as there as their adult child. To be able to have an agency that you’re already set up with and being able to call to know that you can get somebody there, that’s so valuable to have that service just on call. It is nice to have the service because I’ve so many cases I’ve seen is you get that nine hundred and one call, whether it’s right, mom landed in the hospital. Now what am I going to do? I need a caregiver today. She’s getting release today, so it’s always good to do a little background check right and established that relationship. That way, when the time comes, you are already are on board. They have your name address, they’ve already met you, they know where the key is if they have to come into the house. They know where all the different kinds of you know aspects are. You know what your mom’s needs are. They know what her medications are. All of those things are already established, so you don’t have to go through that is such an amazing piece of mind and doesn’t cost anything to establish a relationship with the comic carriageency. No, it doesn’t. We do free consultation assessments. Would like to do it in person. So if somebody called Serengetti care, you or someone else from the organization would come out to their home and meet with them for free, have a conversation and see what they think. Is that what you’re saying? That’s what I’m saying. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. And then also, you know, just really looking at the whole thing, there’s so many things that you can do. Even if it’s like right now, family reunions are going on and I’m sure there’s a lot of extra activities and stress on seniors, whether it’s you know, they’re going to have company, they want to look Nice, they want to have extra food in the house, they want to make sure that they’re not stressed out and overwhelmed with a lot of people coming in. Can you guys help with like preparation for events and things like that that we can? We can do whether it’s a short term, if somebody might just be getting out of the hospital or they have company, they’re kind of have anxiety about it. We can help with that. Wonder whether it’s short term or long term. We can do overnight care, we can do twelve hour shifts, we can do for our so it really wants. It really depends. What we do is Taylor with their needs to what we can do for them. So how do we reach you, Kim? You can contact us at two thousand and six four hundred and eighty nine fifty one hundred and twenty hmm and you can check out our website at Saringetty carecom Serengeti Sea Arcom Kim, thanks so much for being on the program. Thank you for having me. This has been a special presentation of answers for elders with Seengetti care. For more information for Seeingetti Care, go to Seengetti carecom. That’s sere en Geti see a recom
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Originally published August 05, 2017