The Concierge Care Advisors help find senior housing for a multitude of loved ones on a daily basis. The homes always foster freedom, independence, growth and — above all else — safety.
Of course, ‘actions speak louder than words,’ right? It’s one thing to say what we do, but another to actually go forth and do it. As a result, we thought it best to lead by example.
Care Advisor, Kathy Kappler, had a recent move in that was undoubtedly one of the most challenging cases we’ve ever had. Late in the week, we received a call from SW at Northwest Hospital about an old woman who was going to be discharged fairly soon and needed help finding an adult family home. This was on Friday and she was set to be discharged on Monday. Now that may seem like a time crunch, but it’s a fairly common request among our clients, so when the doctors said it would be difficult, we knew there had to be more.
The elderly woman, it turned out, only spoke Russian — something none of us were fluent in. So, before we could even proceed with assessments, Kathy needed to find someone who spoke Russian. She got in touch with a nurse at NW Hospital who could speak Russian and coordinated a time to meet with the elderly woman. Following protocol, the two of them contacted the state case manager to keep her in the loop.
Kathy and the nurse sat down with the woman to talk about the situation, care needs, and next of kin. The woman was very resistant to adult family homes, believing we were mistaken with what she wanted (which was to simply go home), but while the nurse talked with her about the situation, Kathy contacted her main family contact. As fate would have it, the closest living relative was the woman’s son living in Chicago and he wanted nothing to do with his mother’s living situation. Although that can be a hard pill to swallow, it was clear the Russian woman was on her own and needed their help more than ever.
Although reluctant to hear about adult family home options, she did eventually agree when the doctor got involved. They listed her symptoms and condition and this had a very sobering effect on the woman who realized that she was experiencing memory loss. After describing how adult family homes work, she was on board to (at least) browse… but when they asked about her finances, she revealed that she was on Medicaid which makes the search infinitely more challenging as most homes don’t accept Medicaid.
So now there was another problem. Usually our Care Advisors are in such good standing that we can usually work something out with homes that don’t normally accept Medicaid, but that wasn’t the only issue. We needed to find an adult family home with caregivers and nurses who speak Russian for the woman’s sake!
