News Articles on Senior Home Companions

Helping elderly stay at home

By Jeannie Kever

For Carol Lauterbach, as for so many other people grappling with illness and indignities of age, the fear spread beyond pain or even death.
 Not that she felt at home in the uncharted territory that she’d entered when doctors said she would need immediate surgery for a brain tumor; not that she welcomed the debilitating side effects of the radiation therapy that followed.
 But she also feared the loss of independence, the thought of leaving her home and the neighbors who had become such an important part of her life.
 It is never easy for anyone to admit, but the 73-year-old Lauterbach needed help.
 Preferably, help from someone with whom she could find common ground.
 Enter Home Sitting Seniors of Florida.
 The brainchild of an advertising executive and social worker looking for second careers, the 17-month-old company seeks to capitalize on one of Southwest Florida’s most plentiful natural resources: active older people who want to do something meaningful while earning extra money, and retirees who need help to remain independent.
 As company co-owner Tom Kennedy said, there is a natural affinity among people who understand immediately that “Ike” refers to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, not to the former husband of rock star Tina Turner.  People who realize that accepting a helping hand is just another phase in the evolution of life.
 The company matches people who need assistance – not skilled nursing care, but help with such chores as taking a shower, grocery shopping, fixing meals, and addressing Christmas Cards – with those who can call upon a lifetime of experience to aid their peers.
 “The concept of keeping people in their homes is very important,: said Judy Cuppy, a former social worker who joined Kennedy in founding the company. “It’s important to have their pictures around them, their things.”
 And it is important that a caretaker be a peer, she said, rather than someone who may be younger than the client’s grandchildren.
 “They say, ‘We can sit down and talk to you,’” said 74-year-old caregiver Peg Law, who has worked for Home Sitting Seniors for 1 ½ years.
 “They need to be with someone who likes to talk to them.  I feel I’m doing a lot of good.”
 Law, a retired secretary, had cared for her own mother for 10 years, often with the help of home health aides.  But the companies she used sometimes sent a different person each day: people who didn’t know her, didn’t know her mother; didn’t know the daily routine, or where things were kept in the kitchen.  And Law saw the small disruptions that could follow.
 Home Sitting Seniors pairs clients with caregivers from Bradenton to Venice, trying to match personalities as well as schedules.
 A well-traveled client may enjoy spending time with a caregiver who can discuss the exotica of Singapore or the castles of Germany, Kennedy said.  Those with pets generally prefer animal lovers.
 That individualized match is a key to the value of Home Sitting Seniors, said Patsy Bergsrud, a discharge planner at Doctors Hospital of Sarasota.
 The company is included among the list of agencies that the hospital supplies to patients needing help with the transition from hospital to home.  Bergsrud used the firm to help her father for about seven months.
 “Seniors helping seniors is just unique, because that’s what they do,” she said.
 Beyond age, however, the compatibility of personalities and mutual respect must also be taken into consideration.
 “We’re about the same age,” Pauline George said as she began to explain why she and Lauterbach are a good mesh of caregiver and client.
 “She’s an intelligent woman.  Hopefully, I am too.  She’s uncomplaining, tolerant with all the misfortune she’s had.”
Finding their niche
Company co-founder Tom Kennedy spent 21 years in the advertising business, working first in Washington, D.C., and then in Atlanta before moving to Sarasota three years ago.
 Soon, he met Cuppy, who had recently moved from Indiana.
 They began looking for a niche, something that was needed in Southwest Florida but not yet available.
 “If we can keep seniors in their home another week, a month, a year or two, then we’ve accomplished what we set out to do,” Kennedy said.
 He said that Home Sitting Seniors follows a concept that has been tried elsewhere in the United States but not in this part of Florida: pairing seniors who want or need work – their numbers have increased as interest rates plunged and stayed low, reducing the investment income of many retirees – with seniors who need some help.
 The service costs $10 an hour, $130 for a 24-hour shift.  The caregivers receive 70 percent, Kennedy said.
 The agency provides caregivers for as little as four hours a day, three days a week, up to 24 hours a day.
 The caregivers don’t do heavy housework, but will fix meals, wash dishes, and do laundry and other light chores.
 They don’t provided medical care.
 They can remind people to take medication, Cuppy said, but they can’t dispense it.  Caregivers can help clients get into the tub or shower, but can’t bathe them.
 Most caregivers are in their 60s or 70s, although some are in their 50s, Kennedy said.  Most are non-smokers, because most clients don’t smoke and don’t like caregivers who do.
 Each one must have a current driver’s license.
 Kennedy said he looks for intangible qualities: “A very caring person, compassionate, sincere.  A senior who has a background of taking charge,” and will be comfortable guiding clients through activities like planning menus, buying groceries and making appointments.
 “We found folks that are very capable, people in their 70s and 80s that still play tennis.”
 They found people who wanted and needed to work, but weren’t interested in bagging groceries or flipping burgers.
 Kennedy interviews all potential caregivers in their homes, looking for clues to their personalities and backgrounds.  He and Cuppy then check their references and employment histories.
 Clients hear of the service through hospitals, social service agencies and word-of-mouth.  Often sons and daughters call, desperate for someone to keep tabs on aging parents.
 Each client, too, is interviewed personally, as Kennedy tries to determine who on his roster of caregivers will be the best match.  Then the client and caregiver meet, with Kennedy present, to see whether they are comfortable together.  If they are not, he said, he finds somebody else.
A helping hand
Carol Lauterbach heard about the service as she recovered from brain surgery at Doctors Hospital last August.
 “The doctor said he wouldn’t let me go home unless I had somebody with me 24 hours a day,” said Lauterbach, who’s husband had died last spring.
 “I could have gone into a nursing home, at least temporarily,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave my home.  I have lovely neighbors.”
 After four weeks, she needed help only 12 hours a day; now, she uses the service just four hours a day.
 She completed radiation treatments about a month ago, and gradually has begun to do more for herself.
 She has resumed driving and cooks most of her own meals.
 Originally from Wisconsin, Lauterbach and her husband had moved to Sarasota from Florida’s East Coast seven years ago in order to be near her son.  Her health was good at that time, although her husband’s lengthy illness had been stressful.
 She had no warning of a lymphoma growing in her brain.
 “I didn’t even know I had it,” she said. “It was just all of a sudden that I talked funny, like I said I needed to go to the pool to get some meat for dinner.”
 “It happened overnight, from Sunday to Monday.”
 A friend noticed and called her son.  He took her to the doctor that Tuesday.  By Thursday, she was in the hospital, awaiting surgery.
 Lauterbach is recovering, but it has not been easy.  Radiation stole her hearing, as well as her hair.
 “The radiation really takes everything out of you,” she said.  “For weeks, I couldn’t eat.  And of course, it makes you very, very tired.  I’m still very tired.
 “At first, I couldn’t eve walk to get the mail.  I still feel I need somebody to do certain things.  Pauline even wrote out my Christmas Cards.”
 George, who went to work for Lauterbach last fall, had first heard about the agency through an acquaintance.
 “I must be honest,” she said.  “The financial angle was essential.  My husband and I don’t have sufficient income.  This seemed a nice way of earning it at my age.”
 George, 71, and her husband moved to Sarasota from the Virgin Islands about six years ago.  She had been a licensed Realtor, accustomed to dealing with people.  But her husband is a diabetic, and his health worsened, they’d decided to move to Florida to be near their son and better medical care.
 A former commercial artist, she’s adept at printing thank you cards and handling other correspondence for clients.
 “I love to cook, and I like to sew,” she said.  “I do anything people want.”

Sarasota Herald Tribune - Helping elderly stay at home.

Caregivers

Some retirees earn extra cash by helping less-active
peers fill lonely hours with activity and companionship.
By Eileen Kelley
 
Once one of them giggles, it’s all over.  Everyone giggles.
 “Who’s got the key?” 87-year-old Jean McVey sings out.
 Urilla “Lou” Gazda, a 60-something-year-old, recognizes the whimsical cue and responds, “I’ve got the key.”
 Mary Yoder, 67, laughs as the women open the door to McVey’s condominium at Sunnyside Village, an assisted living facility in Sarasota County.
 Gazda and Yoder – brought together by their work – laugh often and count McVey as a friend, but make no mistake, they take their job seriously.
 The two are mothers and grandmothers.  They’re also widows and caregivers.
 They came to Florida to spend their remaining y6ears as retirees.
 Now they’re friends, brought together five months ago after McVey, who suffered a stroke, returned from a rehabilitation center.
 “She (McVey) wouldn’t go anywhere if we weren’t here for her,” says Gazda as she strolls behind Yoder and McVey, who walk arm in arm.
 Gazda and Yoder are caregivers for Senior Home Companions, a Sarasota-based caregiver referral service.
Business built on an aging generation
 Gazda and Yoder are the kind of workers employers will see more of as more Americans enter retirement.
 Most baby boomers – the 76 million people born from 1946 to 1964 – are expected to work well past retirement age.
 In a Rutgers University study, more than 90 percent of American workers said they expect to work at least part time after retiring from their careers.
 Reasons vary from financial to quality of life.  Some say they enjoy the interaction that work provides.
 Some of Yoder’s six children have urged her to give up caretaking, hr job for more than 25 years, but she says it’s her gift.
 “They think I have worked hard enough, but I say two or three days a week is good for me,” Yoder says.  “The elderly really get to my heart and I just feel they need the best care that they can get.”
Sarasota-based company pairs senior caregivers with homebound peers
Yoder and Gazda say they understand the impact of aging – becoming forgetful, losing hearing and suffering other maladies – and that knowledge helps them do their jobs.
 “I think we understand each other better,” Gazda says.
 Judy Cuppy says she understands seniors’ concerns, too.
 She and former business partner Tom Kennedy founded Senior Home Companions – initially called Home Sitting Seniors – in 1992.
 A social worker who moved from Indiana nine years ago, Cuppy recognized that many Floridians wanted to work after retiring.  At the same time, she said, a need existed to provide help for homebound seniors.
 As of mid-January, 410 homemaker and companion businesses were registered by the state, but when Cuppy started, only a few existed in Florida.
 In her first year, Cuppy’s caregiver referral list was double that of her client list, which had five names.  The business made a profit of $27,000.
 But word spread.
 Cuppy and Kennedy networked at business meetings and visited hospitals and rehabilitation centers to talk about in-home care.
 “I think it helped me understand about folks who are sick and can’t get around as well,” Cuppy said of those experiences.
 She also drew on her own life.  Cuppy, 58, has twice beat cancer.  Also, her grandmother lived in a nursing home for 18 years.  “I have never been one to sit back and do nothing.” Cuppy said.
 By 1995, Cuppy’s business served Bradenton and Fort Myers.  Revenues climbed to $151,000.  Three years later, they hit $299,859.
 Now, Senior Home Companions serves eight Florida counties in addition to Indianapolis and Atlanta.  The company’s 1,150 Florida caregivers served 1,511 clients.
 Each branch is individually supervised.
 Caregivers are screened to match their clients’ interests and experiences, Cuppy said.
 The Florida Department of Law Enforcement checks the caregiver’s backgrounds.
 Most caregivers spend 20 hours a week with their clients. Clients are billed weekly; hourly rates average about $12.  Of that, $8.50 goes to the caregiver, $2.40 goes to the ranch manager and Cuppy gets $1.10.
 Most other in-home health agencies may charge $17 to $34 hourly, depending on the level of care.
 Unlike those agencies, which offer registered nurses and nursing assistance, employees of Senior Home Companions cannot administer medicine or bathe clients.
 Most of Cuppy’s caregivers do light housekeeping, go grocery shopping and cook meals.  Some also socialize with their clients, taking them to movies or for walks on the beach.
 “I don’t need to charge people $17, $18, $19 an hour because I don’t have the administrative (support) and we don’t have storefront offices,” Cuppy said.  Each branch manager works from home.
 The youngest caregivers are 50; most are about 63 years old and are women.  One woman is in her 80s.  For half of them, the caretaker work is their first job after being homemakers.
 “They have been training for this their entire lives,” Cuppy said.
Dreams versus reality
 Experience isn’t the only driving force.  Many of the caregivers are caring for others to help make ends meet.
 Pauline George, an English immigrant, had servants when she lived in Rhodesia, now named Zimbabwe.  She cares for Mary Loftus of Sarasota.
 “I do it for the money,” George says flatly.
 George gets $550 a month in Social Security benefits and a small stipend from the British government for being widowed.
 “Which is enough for a bottle of rum,” she says.
 She makes $160 a week through Senior Home Companions.
 “I think I’ll stick with this for as long as I need it,” George says.  “So I can just about come out in one piece.”
 Carl E. Van Horn, director o the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, says that 10 percent of all workers will supplement their incomes by working during their retirement years.
 Almost half – 42 percent – will work part time for interest and enjoyment.  Twenty percent will start their own businesses and 11 percent said they’ll do volunteer work.
 “Americans worry a great deal about whether they will ever have financial freedom to shape their destiny in their later years,” Van Horn Said.
 “There is a gap between their dreams and their realities.”
 In the past few years, George and Loftus have logged more than 17,000 miles in Loftus’ car, traveling to Canada, Georgia and elsewhere.
 “She takes my arm everywhere I go,” George says.  “She likes eating and I like cooking.
… We have a lot in common.  We do the crosswords together.  We both enjoy classical music and Lawrence Welk.”
 Loftus enjoys the friendship she’s formed with George.
 “We work together very well,” Loftus says.  “If we didn’t, you’d have chaos.  We don’t have any problems.  Do we have any problems?”

Business Weekly - Helping hands.

Across the Generations, a kind of give-and-take

By Carol E. Lee
She was one of the few women to get a graduate degree from Colombia University in the 1930s.  She lived on her own.  She never had children and remained single until she was 43, in an era when the popular radio show “Our Gal Sunday” began with the question: “Can this girl from a little mining town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled English-man?”
 Georgiana Quinlan has always been independent.
 Her age – 102 – hasn’t changed her attitude.  But it has caught up with her body.  She bounced back from a stroke about 10 ears ago and survived colon cancer at age 95.  Now she’s legally blind – the result of macular degeneration – and needs some help getting around.
 Quinlan’s stepson, Bill Novack, and his wife, Ilene, look out for her.  But they also rely on a growing service that pairs baby boomers with those of earlier generations.  The idea is for people like Quinlan to retain their independence while getting some assistance and even friendship.
 “She’s reached the point where she needs someone in the house,” said Ilene Novack, who shares round-the-clock caretaking duties with her husband.  “Senior Home Companions has been our person who comes in and gives us our respite.”
 The agency, which recently opened a new branch in Charlotte County, serves nine counties in Florida and has offices in Georgia and Indiana.  There are 88 companions in Manatee, Sarasota, and Charlotte counties, where close to 30 percent of residents are over the age of 65; the companions offer relief to families caring for an elderly relative.
 Companions spend time with clients, doing their laundry, taking them grocery shopping or to get their hair done, traveling with them and even evacuating them during a hurricane.
 “They get someone to talk to, someone to have a meal with, someone to be a friend,” said Judy Cuppy, the agency’s president and owner.
 Companions spend between 12 hours a week and 24 hours a day with their clients.  The rate for the service is $13.50 an hour.
 “We keep the same person on the job,” said Cuppy, adding that 24-hour shift would be shared by a couple of companions.  “A different person coming to your door all the time is very confusing for the elderly.”
 In August 2002, the Novacks, who lived across the street from Quinlan in Strathmore Riverside Villas in Sarasota, hired Senior Home Companions to fill in when they take vacations and to relieve them on weekends.
 “You need to get away and have a private life,” Ilene Novack said.
 It took time for Quinlan to find the right fit – some talked too much.  Then Rosemary Hanssen came along.
 Soon after Hanssen arrives at 8 on Saturday mornings, she and Quinlan, who wears glasses with clip-on shades flipped up, hit the pavement arm-in-arm for a stroll up the block.
 Quinlan, whose second husband was 88 when he died four years ago, isn’t shy about her intentions.
 “I’m looking for a fellow,” she said.  “I even have a yellow dress: Dress in yellow, catch a fellow.”
 Unfortunately, most men in her neighborhood have dogs, she said.  A real turnoff.
 Still, she slips into the bright yellow dress with a large white collar embroidered with black stitching and accented with large, shiny black buttons.
 “She picks up her legs and struts out there,” said Hanssen, who cares for three clients.  “She’s social with her neighbors.”
 Quinlan and Hanssen, 61, also spend afternoons sitting outside, talking and singing along to musicals like “Gigi” and “My Fair Lady.”
 “She can’t see them, but she can sit there and sing all the words with them,” Hanssen said.
 By this time, Hanssen knows all the words, too.  Nothing gets them going more than that scene in “My Fair Lady” when Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle sheds her lady-like inhibitions while cheering at the Ascot Horserace and blurts out: “Move yer bloomin’ arse!”
 “That’s our favorite part,” Hanssen said.  “We go hysterical.”
 Hanssen has been spending weekends with Quinlan, whom she calls “a tough broad from Brooklyn,” since March.  She pours Quinlan’s customary morning bowl of Crispix or bite-sized Shredded Wheat, or, when she’s in the mood, Froot Loops, and a banana.
 It’s part of her job to prepare Quinlan’s meals: a few pieces of walnut, a thumb-size slice of Danish and half a sandwich for lunch; Lemon pepper chicken from Publix, sweet potatoes and peas for dinner.
 But the meals are served more as obligations between moments of friendship.
 “She tells me a lot about her life,” Hanssen said, “how she went to Europe, sailed on a boat to Italy, went to France.”
 Their relationship is a generational give-and-take.
 “She’s a very lovely girl,” Quinlan said of Hanssen, who reads to her from books like “Mayflower” by Nathaniel Philbrick.
 Hanssen listens to Quinlan’s stories about the Great Depression.  Quinlan absorbs Hanssen’s youthful energy and doesn’t hesitate to pepper her with questions about what life is like for a “girl” these days.

Sarasota Herald Tribune - Across the generations.