The FirstLight Care Corner

The Case for Hiring a Caregiver

From our Care Blog

A USA Today poll revealed that 41 percent of baby boomers with living parents are providing some kind of care to them, either financially, personally or both and an estimated 34 million unpaid caregivers in America provide an average of 21 hours a week of care. When you realize that an older adult in your family needs extra help, a few options come to mind: move him or her to an assisted living facility, hire a caregiver or move in to do the caregiving yourself. This is a challenging decision for many people and requires some serious thought. Before you...

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Honor Elderly Veterans this Memorial Day

From our Care Blog

In the United States, there are over 21 million military veterans, including over 9 million vets aged 65 and over. Since 1966, Memorial Day has been a time to celebrate, honor and remember service members who gave their time, effort and lives to our country. This Memorial Day weekend, honor the veterans in your life by thanking them for their service. • Spend time with a veteran. If you personally know a veteran, bring him or her dinner or invite him or her to a barbeque to celebrate Memorial Day and honor veterans. If you don’t know a vet, visit...

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FirstLight celebrates second annual national conference

From our Care Blog

What a great three days with our FirstLight Home Care owners at our second National Conference last week! Truly extraordinary people who are providing exceptional care and to whom I am very proud to say I am on their team. We welcomed 65 franchisees, employees and caregivers to the event at The Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta, Ga. The three day event incorporated panels and roundtable sessions on best tips and practices of successful networking, effective management, administration and training techniques, plus focus groups for recruiting, advertising, social media and care coordination. Special presentations from industry experts and guest speakers were...

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Caregiving doesn’t stop if your loved one is hospitalized

From our Care Blog

Today we handed the spotlight over to Martine Ehrenclou, M.A., an award-winning author and patient advocate, who shared her personal experiences of handling the care and hospitalization of her mother and godmother and how others can navigate the intimidating hospital world. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Have a great weekend, all! -- Jeff Bevis I began my journey into advocacy eleven years ago when my mother and godmother were patients in hospitals for very lengthy stays (five months and seven months respectively.) I was not prepared for what I saw and experienced with their...

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Stress Awareness Month: Stress stops here

From our Care Blog

April is Stress Awareness Month, a national effort sponsored by The Health Resource Network (HRN) to inform people about the dangers of stress, offer coping strategies and disprove harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society. Prominent writer Martin Boroson, author of One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go, published an article yesterday on Huffington Post about “stresscalation”—the way in which we pass our stress to other people, often unwillingly. Boroson challenged readers to vow not to pass their stress on to others for one day, in honor of National Stress Awareness Day on April 16. It’s...

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Caring for the Caregiver

From our Care Blog

I’m excited to introduce you to LeAnn Thieman, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Caregiver’s Soul. She has provided a great guest post for our readers about caring for the caregiver. Strong bonds between family members are crucial to any healthy relationship. However, caregivers often require additional support from family members as they carry both the young and older relatives on their shoulders. LeAnn does a great job of offering advice to help care for the caregiver in your family.   Terry stacks the breakfast dishes into the sink, hands the freshly-packed lunchboxes to her son and daughter, bundles them...

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FirstLight Home Care of Contra Costa Receives Home Care Pulse Certification

From our Care Blog

We’re excited to announce that our location in Walnut Creek, California, has received its Home Care Pulse Certification, a certification program dedicated to the measurement of client and employee satisfaction scores. Home Care Pulse created the certification program to measure key satisfaction aspects of its in-home care delivery as well as the level of satisfaction of the caregiving staff. This certification requires an agency to be reviewed monthly and includes the evaluation of areas such as loyalty, benchmarking improvements, client and employee interviews, caregiver performance, caregiver morale, agency incentives and caregiver rewards to name a few. Local franchisee David Bonacci...

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Get involved! A little goes a long way

From our Care Blog

Brian Kreindler, owner of FirstLight Home Care in Columbus, Ohio, is facilitating a Current Events Talk and luncheon for seniors next week at his local Jewish Community Center. The luncheon will focus on discussing politics and the upcoming election. Events like this are a great way for seniors to GET INVOLVED and interact with others in the community. It also gives Brian a chance to network with other small business owners and potential clients in the area. For those of you who are looking to become more active in your community or want to volunteer and make a positive contribution...

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Connecting with a person who has Alzheimer’s Disease

From our Care Blog

I'm excited to share another guest post with our readers today. Ellen Woodward Potts is the co-author of A Pocket Guide for the Alzheimer’s Caregiver and here she discusses how to connect with a loved one who has Alzheimer's Disease and shares some of her own personal experiences. At FirstLight, we believe if you have met one person with dementia, you've only met one person. That is, each individual will talk, act, remember, and behave differently, not simply because of what stage of dementia they are in, but because they are who they are. That's why we've developed a unique...

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Hospitals need to revamp to cater to aging population

From our Care Blog

According to a recent article on USA Today’s website, an astonishing one-third of hospital patients older than 70 leave more frail than when they arrived. Further research shows that even after they are released, nursing home care or rehabilitation can be necessary. The elder care experts quoted in the article believe that this is a result of “conventional hospital care focusing on treating disease rather than preventing frailty.” So what can be done to help better the quality of care our elderly are receiving? Many hospitals have implemented walking programs to help get the seniors out of bed and moving—a...

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