Senior Advisor Follow-Ups with Daphne Davis
What happens after your loved one has been placed into a senior living environment? Daphne Davis at Pinnacle Senior Placements does consistent follow-ups up to 90 days after you loved one has chosen a new environment. Sometimes it’s just a conversation, but often it’s a face-to-face visit to make sure everything is going well. An advisor should be preparing you for what’s coming down the road.
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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.
And Welcome back to answers for elders radio and I am here with Founder and CEO of Pinnacle Senior placements and one of our favorite people in the world, Daphne Davis. Definitely welcome back. Thank you, thank you. You know, we are getting into the holiday season. I can’t believe it. It’s this year is gone by so incredibly fast and you know, talking about you know, as we’re going in there a lot of times families have you know, they’ve potentially they look back at the year and say, okay, well, we’re going to start to see changes with mom or dad or things like that in there’s a lot of things that happen during this time, but we haven’t really talked about the follow up. What happens when you get involved with a family and once mom or dad moves into a community, what happens? Good question. Pinnacle we do continuing follow up at least up to ninety days after someone has chosen a new environment of care and at home, and we do that in ways. Sometimes it’s just a conversation that we will have with the family over the phone. Sometimes it’s a conversation with the primary caregivers of whatever community they’re in. Many times it’s a facetoface visit. This is just dropping in and seeing the person who has been moved to a new care community, but we want to make sure that things are going well. There’s a lot of logistics that happened during that first time, that initial meeting of the family, the advisor doing some research based on the highest values of the family, the limitations that might be in their unique story, and then there’s an actual touring that we do together and hopefully we’ve hit it on the mark that you feel like you have, you know, at least three or four good options. But it’s the time after that that can get a little dicey and sometimes it’s things that we don’t expect. I try very hard. This is another thing to think about with an advisor that they should be bitparing you for what maybe coming down the road. Sure, that makes total sense. Sometimes it’s just as simple as a communication missfire. You know, I thought this was going to be happening Daphne, but this is how it’s being executed. So sorry, we didn’t get that cleared up. Let’s work together and talk to the whoever does there. Yeah, we’re the executive direct young the nurse or whatever. Yeah, let’s talk to him with I’ll meet together and if you would like, I would be happy to be a part of that conversation. Many times I want to empower families because they are good communicators. They’re just stressed in their second guessing themselves. So many times I play the role of just affirming that what they’re feeling, thinking or observing is correct. Well, and I think one of the things you bring up, which I don’t think families are aware of, and that families they are allowed to have a care conference any time they want. We have the community and it is in the community’s best interest to work with the family and they want to, but they sometimes don’t know any better. I remember when my mom was in assist a living and she was so unhappy with the food and she had a little bit of dementia and she couldn’t, I couldn’t put my finger on it until finally I had lunch with her one day and I realized they weren’t bringing her milk with her mail and that was just such a simple thing. Yeah, when you really don’t think about those little things, but that made all the difference. She was happy, but she didn’t know how to express it. That’s right and those are the things I think as as an advocate for a loved one. Doesn’t that make a different? It makes a huge difference. And you set a couple of things there. One, you spent actual time at lunch time to figure this out. Yeah, I did. You are the daughter, you are going to know your mom. You’re going to see the little nuances better than anyone else. Then the other pieces, if if you had had a Daphnee, would be to say, you know, this is what my mom saying. What do you think that could mean? Or what am I missing? I’m so close to the situation that I might not be able to see what she’s telling. You a while to figure it out. Your advisor should be your relationship with that advisor should be so secure that you just think, you know what, I can call Daffney, I can call Cheryl, I can call emily, I can call Joline, I can call anybody and have them hear my story and and say, you know what Susan, you’re in left field. We’d say that nicely. Or you can say spot on, let’s try and figure this out. This is an easy fix, but to have that relationship, that’s there for to allow for that kind of followship follow up. Many Times our company, our advisors, are going to drop in, we’re going to be in the area, we’re going to drop in and just see kind of what’s going on. The other thing that can happen is that we can have candid conversations with both the community of care and the family that sometimes the family and the community of care don’t feel like they can have because they haven’t built a relationship yet. Good boy, and so the advisor’s job is to help that relationship build. In my world, that starts when we start touring and it’s having to go with the family. Absolutely we’re with them. I’m the I’m the person who’s going to introduce each other to them. If there’s a situation where someone goes back and says I want to go visit that community again, I really encourage the family to go by themselves so that they can be the primary communication. Sure, I’m no longer the bridge anyway, we digressed, but in the follow up piece and getting that communication to happen, sometimes it just takes that third party again to say everyone’s heart is in the right place, where all have the same motivations. No, one’s going to get in trouble, nobody’s going to be ostracized, nobody’s going to be kicked out, nobody’s going to talk to APS or, you know, I’m radsman, all the things that we make up in our head that the advisor can help eliminate and have communication be spot on well, and I think the other thing that happens is that that dynamic, when you’re touring and where you’re going with the family, you’re taking away all of the dynamic of Wilma. I promised mom I never put her in the home, and so now I have to be the bad guy because now you’re just there to support your parent and letting them do what they’re going to do and learn that process. You know, I it took me a while to figure that piece out and you know, to have somebody like you that can help coach the adult child on how to be that support for your family so you don’t get into this dynamic that families are dealing with. I mean, would you say that’s true? Absolutely? I was just to add an Alzheimer’s conference down in Tacoma and was listening to one and speakers in the questions from the families and one of them was that, you know, I leave and my mom says she wants to go home all the time. Just for you to understand that that might not mean she really wants to go home. That might mean something completely different. Now I’m talking in the state of dementia, some kind of dementia, but to have an advocate who can help you understand the difference. And, more importantly, what’s a phrase I can use when there’s multiple people in the family that are talking to mom or dad, so all of you have to be on the same page. What is the other thing? The other thing too, when you’re when you’re talking about this, when you really think about it, is thanksgiving. Families come into town right and that this time of year and they may not have seen you know, a sibling. You know, you may be the primary caregiver, but all of a sudden siblings come to town and they’ll make their token visit to mom or dad, which is sad, but that’s what happens, and all of a sudden they come back with a different story. It’s like when you know now you feel maybe conscientious, did I miss something? Or you get defensive as a care as as their caregiver. And that doesn’t work either. So the fact is to have somebody like you that is that buffer that says, you know what this is, what this means. You know. And MOM is may want to put on a front, great front, to brother and sister that they only see, you know, a couple times a year. It’s a very different isn’t it? Death, and that’s going to happen all the time. Just see. That’s where the advisor can help prepare you, even if there hasn’t been a move involved, have an advisor that you can call that says, okay, we’re having you know, my sister who lives in Baltimore and she’s going to be here and she only sees mom twice a year. How can I prepare her to be effective with mom and not have her heartbroken? How can I help mom in knowing that this is going to happen? Do I tell her two weeks in advance or I tell her an hour in advance? Do I introduce myself? Do I take away the opportunities for her to feel like she’s losing face? Do I make it easy for her to remember who I am because she hasn’t seen me for six months? And how do I do that. That’s, you know, is those are the things that a good advisor should do. Yes, and we are talking again to Daphne Davis from pinnacles senior placements, and Daphne tell us about areas that you guys served. And, Mr Washington, we serve from Thurston county up to Scatchett County. We go out to Jefferson County, out in Port Angeles and Squim we serve Bremerton, you know, and we even serve Seattle. I love that. That’s important. You guys really and and one of the things that you’ve said, I think, in a previous interview, is it that I think it’s important now is I think you know, and it’s really it’s part of follow up. But the great thing about it is, is it your services are a hunt, one hundred percent free to families. Yes, so that’s important to share. Yeah, I’m in all of us in this community are paid kind of like a real letter. We get a onetime commission that we’re paid. I, as a company, have chosen to work with every single care community in western Washington, whether or not we have socalled the contract with them or not, because whatever is right for your family, I want you to have that as a benefit. There should never be a negative to you calling us. Pinnacle senior placements is here to take away some of the mystery of what the next stages, the next chapters of life look like. We’re here to make this an easier transition. We’re here to answer your questions low key, never making decisions. We’re an information post. I love that. I love that and and you know, really that’s the greatest gift of family can get, because it’s having that ability to reach out to somebody, you know, not feeling like you’re all alone, and also understanding that once smarm or dad goes to assist a living, you still have somebody to pick up and, you know, and pick up the phone. I mean, I know my mom. She would have little bouts of dementia and she got upset at the janitor that would come into her, you know, her skilled nursing facility. It’s like all of a sudden she thought she was snooping through her things, because it’s a dementia thing and I didn’t know how to deal with that. You should be able to call that advisor, like what am I gonna do? And it’s like mom was upset and it’s like having somebody like a daphne to come in and say it’s okay, this is what’s happening. It’s d getting it away from me to have to be defensive, and I that’s her. That’s so important. I had a family that called just yesterday. I had helped her with her father in the summertime and now, unfortunately, her mother has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she’s like what do I do, Daphne? I mean she called me and I haven’t talked to her for probably four or five months and she calls me up and I would that’s the relationship that you can have with an advisor that says I known that. You know, because of my mom’s health, we can’t go to an adult family home, we can’t go to assistant living, but I’m sure you have some ideas of what I can do for my mom. So, dephite, how do we reach you? You reach me at eight hundred and fifty five, seven, three, four, one, one, five hundred and you can also reach me at Pinnacle Senior Placementscom at our website. Well, we’re glad you were on the show today. We’re always happy to have you. Thanks so much,
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Originally published November 17, 2018