Photo: Denise and Eric Kaye. Photo courtesy Jean Laninga Creative
Denise and Eric Kaye, owners of Connections In Home Care, have been providing professional care that allows people to age in place in their homes for more than six years in the Valley.
Since they are such a respected resource in the senior community, they had people asking their help in finding the right community for their loved ones when aging in place is no longer an option.
So Denise and Eric decided to expand their business and created Connections In Communities. A free service to help seniors find the correct community to fit their needs.
“We’re still connecting hearts to homes; it just might look a little different,” says Denise. “We do all of the leg work and find the best solution. We have contracts with all the communities and the residential assisted living homes and memory care places. This is another solution for our clients and their aging journey.”
Once a person needs a lot of in-home care, it can get costly to have a caregiver come to them. For example, for twenty hours of at-home care a week, it could cost up to $30,000 a year.
“We want to help guide someone and give them the right resources, whether they need just our help, or an ALTCS specialist to help them with that paperwork, a Medicare specialist or an elder law attorney,” says Eric. ALTCS is an acronym for the Arizona Long Term Care System. This is a state-administered insurance plan for Arizona residents who lack the financial means to pay for long-term care.
“We want to help our clients get where they need to be,” says Eric. “So it’s a one-and-done kind of thing, and they’ll never move again, and everyone has that peace of mind.”
“Obviously, aging in place in your home is what everyone wants; it’s just you have to be realistic.” Says Denise. “That’s why we try to educate people and tell them that in your 50s you should sit down with a financial planner. We are living longer, and what kind of money will you need to have to be able to stay in your home?”
It’s a very emotional decision on the best of days, but often the Kayes will get a call from a spouse or adult child who is having to make a decision in a stressful, emergency situation. Denise has taken more than one call where the adult child says, “I don’t even know how much money my parents have, but they want to stay at home.”
Connections In Home Care also performs a comprehensive assessment of someone’s functioning because it all has to factor into the level of care they require and to find the appropriate placement. For example, do they have cognitive deficits? Are they more social? Will a residential or community setting be a better fit? These are just a few of the questions to take into consideration.
“If someone does need more of that one-on-one care, there are great small communities that we found that give you that ‘sense of home’ feeling,” says Denise. “There’s a lot of residential assisted living houses that are beautiful. And there are only ten people in them, so that’s another good solution. And then there’s the big communities that offer a lot of activities and socialization.”
Denise continues, “We have a lot of places that we have vetted and feel confident with, and they share our same values of care, and that’s really important to us.”
“It’s our way of having a full continuum of care for clients that need us – no matter what,” adds Eric.
For more information on Connections In Home Care or Connections In Communities, visit connectionsinhomecare.com.
