How Daphne Davis Got Started at Pinnacle Senior Placements
Daphne Davis at Pinnacle Senior Placements talks about how she got started in the career of senior placement 20 years ago. Chuck Olmstead fills in for Suzanne Newman.
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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.
The following podcast is provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. Welcome to answers for elders. My name is Chuck Olmstead and I’m filling in today for Suzanne. Susan’s not feeling very well and I thought she called and said, Hey, could you fill in today, and I said absolutely, would love to do it, especially because our guest for the entire hour is Daphne Davis with pinnacles senior placements. Daphnee, welcome to answers for elders. This is going to be exciting. Thank you. It is. It is because I always enjoy talking to you, Dittoh, it’s easy. It’s easy, lots of things to talk about. There are lots of things to talk about and I know you’ve been on answers for elders now for well over a year and one of the things that I mentioned to you before we started the program is I’d like to kind of hear the back story of how you got started in assisting seniors and being a part of senior placement. How many years have you been doing senior placement? So twenty years ago, who would have funk would be helping our seniors in and this capacity. But it was twenty years ago that I got invited to help an existing business, an adult family home that at the time had three homes on the East Hill of Kent and my very best friend’s mom had moved into that home and at the time I had little kids, preschoolers and toddlers, and had my background is always been business. I’ve always owned my own business. I kind of been the blazer of a trail. And I said I don’t know nothing about elder communities, I know nothing about seniors. I’m with preschools and toddlers as the other end of the world. And so she said what this company wants to grow and your background is growing businesses and you know how to do that, and I said, well, I’ll talk to him. And so I talked to the owners of the company and their vision was to grow to eight adult family homes. Each adult family home has six beds in it highly regulated. But twenty years ago. Things have changed a lot in the twenty years. And I said, you know, because I know nothing about this and I really wanted a part time job and my priority with my two boys and I didn’t want to be tied down. And so I said, let me work for you for free. I will work for you for three four free. And let’s just think about three months and I knew nothing, zero. Well, I took to it and I loved it. And why? Because there wasn’t a need for people to have information and I like disseminating information, though I had none at the time. I was like, let me learn with you. Initially, that was my my initial thing and I loved reading about what is elder care? What does this look like? What are the wax for adult family homes? I really was just, Oh so curious and my personality says gather information. And so then what I really liked was working with the families and being solution oriented and having the opportunity to help them solve a problem, and that that fit in my wheelhouse. That was my natural personality. And so as time went on, those three months passed by and it was in the summertime. It was early spring and summer, and I was like I think, I like this. Is there like a place for me? And they’re like no kidding, Daphne, come on, and so that was my introduction and it was with my friend Sandy, and her mom, Thelma, that she was introduced to the adult family homeworld and it was a joy to be able to see the process for Thelma and her journey in living with her disease processes. She passed away a number of years ago, but it was a pleasure to see how you can receive dignified care, how there is something more to life than just waiting for time to pass, because sometimes we can get in the mode that just says, you know, God, I’m ready, HMM, I, I’m ready, take me home, and sometimes that’s not his plan. And so this gave me an opportunity to kind of figure out how can we how can we help people through these chapters of life? Yeah, well, I was thinking twenty years ago the Internet was still in its infancy and so the idea of acquiring knowledge about this was a lot different than it is now. Yes, access to information. I was just curious as to where you went to find information. The first place I went truly was the rcws and wax. So when? What does that mean? That means in terms of looking at Washington State Law, Washington Stat whack, is Washington Code? Yes, yes, and so I read those and I also though was the kid who read the dictionary. Okay, so I was the kid who like the encyclopedia. I was a kid who got, you know, left behind at the museum because I was busy reading everything. So this was a natural place for me to go in terms of gathering information. I went to the library, I talked with other people, I visited communities, I made myself available to find out. What does assisted living look like? What is memory care mean? That word was hardly even used twenty years ago. I mean it was, but not like it is today. Yeah, well, What’s interesting to me is that even though the the technology has allowed and information explosion as far as senior care are yet overall there is still a, and I say this advisedly, and ignorance on a lot of people’s part as far as what the process is and what’s what’s available. Isn’t there? There’s the general public still doesn’t get and that’s why answers for olders is here. Right is to help educate people and your job is specifically to help them navigate through that. Isn’t it yet? Absolutely, that is my job. I just met with a family yesterday up in the Silver Lake area and they were like, we don’t even know these options you’re talking about. We thought we only had x and Y, and there they were, probably in their mid S, you know, knew how to gather information. Hadn’t jumped into this, this arena, though. I mean it’s just like if you think back to when you were raising your own children, until you needed to look for childcare or look at schools, you had none of that information until it was relevant, and so I think a lot of it comes to the place of relevancy. You know, I know that there’s something out there, but it doesn’t apply to me right now. And and let’s face it, we’ve got full brains, really full lives, and so we have to kind of triage the information that we gather. Unfortunately, and I’m going to use that word intentionally, this is an area that would be worth your while to at least start learning the jargon as your friends families. You know, I’m going to speak to the children of elders right now, as your friends are going through this, take a little bit of time to learn about their journey, heed their wisdom. Don’t reinvent the wheel because there it is bumpy. Yeah, it’s a bumpy road, and because you’re emotionally charged and things are changing dramatically in ways that people don’t want them to change. It’s hard to embrace change and so then our natural human personality is to resist it and some personalities can totally be ostriches. Some personalities take strong control and don’t want to have any input. And to be reflective in your own journey. How can I help the people around me that need help now as seniors? How can I put myself to the side and really try to be objective? Very hard to do. HMM. It very hard, and so don’t beat yourself up if that’s a challenge for you. It’s a natural challenge. But do reach out to gathering some information, and that’s where pinnacle senior placements comes in. Well, we are speaking with Daphne Davis. She’s the President and owner of Pinnacle senior placements and if you want to learn more about pinnacle senior placements, of the website address. Is so difficult that and it’s really hard. Pinnacle Senior Placementscom Right. That’s it. So well, in the next segment, we’ve got a couple minutes left, we want to talk about that. That those decisions that are made by care givers and what happens emotionally to the caregiver as they are navigating through those decisions. You know, you are talking about how important is to educate yourself. I think even if your parents aren’t going through it now or or you’re seeing friends go through it, there are some strategic moves that you that you need to make personally in your younger years to prepare your mind and to prepare your finances for the eventual care of yourself or your spouse. Right right, that’s I mean. Sometimes those are thirty, forty year plan if you really think it through, right. So it’s never really too soon to think about senior care. No, it’s not a very common sentence that I hear from the fifty to sixty year old children that I’m working with, like, oh my goodness, Daphni, I should have thought about this, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Minimally, is this really what it costs? Is this really what this means? It’s this how disease processes go. Now it’s not to the place where you want to worry about it, but you do want to be intentional and the word that I like to use is just personally responsible, and you can be in a position that you are the decision maker for your own kind of destiny, to as much as that happens. But but you can be in that driver’s seat in terms of being thoughtful about what would life look like if my body started failing me? Because that’s not unheard of. Our bodies are machines, right, they wear out, you know, smile through it. This is the way it goes. That’s right. It’s not a surprise. Or if my mind gives me challenges. You know, we don’t know what’s going to happen. No one has a crystal ball, but we do know that we can put a little nest egg away. We do know that we can have conversations with our children. That says, you know, I would be open to x, Y and Z, not open to ABC, but to to casually have those conversations and my family. They happen lightheartedly in my family. We now joke about it, you know, and in that joking, sarcasm flipness, we get to know what people are really thinking. That’s right. There’s a real communication. That’s there. Well, I had that experience, and I’ve shared this before, that my father, his father passed away when he was eight years old. And the family. This was back in the mid S. Their family basically broke up after that occurred. In the children, my dad finished eighth grade and he went to work when he was fifteen and he left the family home because he had to go during the depression and go to work. Anyway, major impact on his life. So that then when as I was growing up in the boys we had a painting business, you know, and my dad and I were would be working together, he would tell me as a young man, I am taking care of your mother right now, I am planning when I’m when I pass away, that your mom’s going to be taken care of, and the incredible impact on my life to understand that was a priority of my father to make sure that my mom was taken care of when he was gone. The reality is that’s exactly what happened. He lived till he was ninety three, but my mom continued on for another eight years after my dad passed away and my mother was taken care of. What a gift. It was a gift and it was a gift for me to see that vision from a from an eighth grade educated man, to recognize that he felt the responsibility to take care of his loved one. Yeah, we’re going to talk about this and the next segment. As far as the the caregiver and the necessity to think ahead and think through these things, will be back right after this. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. To contact pinnacles senior placements, go to Pinnacle Senior Placementscom.
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Originally published May 18, 2019