Season 4, Episode 18: Aging Gracefully with Betsy and Chris Head (Part 1)

0:00:03 – Jess

If you’re new here, welcome! And if you came back, oh, God bless ya! Thank you for coming back. This is the Jesus Fix It Podcast with Jess. We talk about everything: life, its craziness, it’s ups and downs. ‘Cause you know what, Jesus can fix it and He can handle it all. Thank you. Another episode of the Jesus Fix it podcast, and this episode is a much, much requested episode taking care of aging parents something a lot of people are dealing with right now, and Betsy and Chris Head are here from Karis Care and they’re going to be sitting down and talking with us today all about that. Can you tell us a little bit about your services?

0:00:49 – Betsy

Sure. Karis Care Services is here to help families in need that have aging loved ones that need a little or a lot of assistance to maintain their independence and continue to live in the home where they have chosen to age in place. We provide everything from companionship and homemaker services up through a full range of personal care services, so we can help with bathing and dressing and mobility issues, we can fix meals, we can take our clients to doctor’s visits and other appointments. Mostly, we’re there to give peace of mind and also enhance quality of life as folks move through the aging spectrum, because life doesn’t have to decline. Quality of life doesn’t have to decline because we get older. We can do things to enhance our quality of life and we can do things to enhance the quality of life for our aging loved ones. 

0:01:42 – Jess

Yeah. 

0:01:43 – Chris

I’ve always sort of described it as being what a family member would do if you had unlimited time and unlimited stamina to be able to do anything to fill in the cracks. Best description I’ve had of it, I think, was we’re a daughter for hire, sometimes a son for hire, but it’s there to help fill that in so that people can age on their terms and in the place that they choose to age, rather than being forced to go someplace that they don’t want to go. 

0:02:14 – Jess

Do you with your services and your experience? Do you have a lot of experience with caregivers, like family members feeling I don’t know what word I want to use Maybe guilty, overwhelmed? I have a friend of mine who recently put her mom transitioned into long-term care and that was very hard for her to have to make that decision Because she said you know, jess, it was one day I was just helping her with a little bit of grocery shopping and then the next day I’m going to get her prescriptions filled and then I’m doing a little laundry and then all of a sudden we’re here, it turned into full on caregiving and then I couldn’t do it myself anymore and I had to help her transition into long term care, help her transition into long-term care. So, like, what experience do you guys have with helping family members make that transition into short-term care or some care services like you guys provide? 

0:03:15 – Betsy

Well, we can help keep the loved one at home so they don’t have to transition their living environment if they don’t want to, and we can do that. 

Most people that call us and you were absolutely dead on guilt is definitely an emotion that is at play. Also, being overwhelmed, feeling like you can’t balance everything that your aging parent needs along with your family. Usually, the folks we’re talking to still have kids. We have grown kids now and we find that our grown kids still need us, even though they’re married and live in other parts of the country. Now, when my daughter needs me, it’s not to sit down and do calculus problems. It’s to fly to Birmingham, Alabama, or drive all day in the car to stay three days and help with her children while she attends a conference yeah, so, because she’s working. But family members that find themselves in that feel like they don’t know where to turn and sometimes they feel like the only option is to move into a facility for care, an assisted living, an independent living or a continuing care community that will go the spectrum from independent living all the way through skilled nursing care. 

0:04:28 – Chris

And the feeling of being overwhelmed. It really is exhausting to be that full-time caregiver and it’s not like dealing. You know people say, oh, it’s just like dealing with children. It’s nothing at all like dealing with children. It’s not in the slightest bit. Because first of all, this is your parents or your grandparents and there’s a level of respect that comes from that. There’s also just the size and the history that goes with that. It’s a place that a lot of people are uncomfortable with and it can be completely overwhelming and exhausting. 

And we’ll get phone calls, sometimes from people that say I’m wondering if you can help me and and sometimes from people that say I’m wondering if you can help me and say, well, you know what’s going on, what do you need, and they’ll talk about the situation and then we’ll tell them a little bit about what we can do and they’ll say, well, can you do these things and help me with this? And we’ve had it where we’ll say that’s exactly what we’re here to do and there’ll be a pause on the phone and then you’ll hear them crying because they just there’s this relief of there’s somebody there that can help me chart through it. And sometimes what we do is not to provide care ourselves, but is to help people chart through the waters of finding care, because it’s, you know, home care is there, but it’s not always the right option. Sometimes it is the right thing to be in facility-based care and sometimes the option is to do a combination of both. We do a lot of work in assisted livings, providing supplemental care to help people chart through those waters. 

It’s a very complicated mix and aging sometimes gets described as being fractured care, because there are so many different facets and the agencies and the areas that would seemingly work together don’t really always communicate real well. And you know, for example the regulators have. You know, we’re licensed by the Virginia Department of Health Division of Acute Care. If you go to an assisted living, you are licensed. That facility is licensed by the Department of Social Services. 

Then if you go to a skilled nursing facility. After that that’s back to being licensed by the Virginia Department of Health but the Division of Long-Term Care. So you’ve got all these different agencies. They don’t talk to each other and there’s not a lot of cross-pollination of information. And if you don’t know how to chart the waters through that, then you’ve got what does Medicare cover? What does it not cover? What about long-term care insurance? What does that cover? What does it not? 

0:07:10 – Jess

cover. Do you qualify for Medicaid, do you not? How do you know? Who do you call? And it sometimes is so much other than just taking care of your loved one. 

0:07:14 – Chris

Sometimes just thrust upon you, because we also get the calls from the son who says I don’t have any idea what to do now because I was Saturday playing golf with my dad and everything was fine. And then Sunday night he had a stroke and now he can’t move on his left side and he can’t talk. And they’re telling me we got to find care and I don’t know what to do. We weren’t planning for this yet. We thought everything was fine. You didn’t have any warning, right? 

0:07:45 – Jess

This is a question one of our listeners sent in no-transcript. 

0:08:13 – Betsy

Yeah, we have conversations with families all the time that are helping their loved ones come to that realization and we come into the home with the family that’s involved with this. We can give the family talking points to address their loved ones separately, or we can come in and help facilitate that conversation and talk about realistically what can you do, what do you feel confident doing on your own, what do you need a little help with? One of the things that we experience a lot is families that call us think well, mom needs around the clock care and she might. But. But we ask some evaluation questions and they have their weighted questions so they give us a numeric score. Depending upon the range of that score, we can say, yeah, your mom probably needs 20 hours a week of care or 40 hours a week of care. How often can family be a part of that scenario? And then we can supplement and fill in the holes. 

So, talking realistically through, are you able to keep up with your medication schedule? 

Do you always take your meds when you’re supposed to, on time? Because maintenance meds for chronic conditions as we age are incredibly important and they’re the things that fall off the radar frequently. They just get lost in the middle I can’t remember if I took it or if I didn’t, so I just won’t take it or sorting the pill box and fingers lose some of their mobility as we age if we develop arthritis and then it’s not as easy to put pills in a pill box. And so a little help with that. That takes 15 minutes once a week. That’s not a time-consuming thing, but maybe that’s what you need is, once a week, somebody to come by do a once-over light housekeeping in the house and sort the pillbox, and that’s something that we can clinically come in and look at and say so realistically. These are the things you need. It’s not really going to impact your sense of freedom and privacy within your own home or independence, but it’s going to enhance that because now you’re going to be able to do it a lot more safely. 

Or maybe you need somebody to come in every day Make sure you’re doing okay, make sure you’ve taken your meds and make sure that you’ve eaten a healthy meal today. Because frequently as seniors age, they don’t feel that sense of hunger or appetite like we do when we’re younger. Their taste buds are not as acute, so food doesn’t taste as good, so it’s not as much fun to sit down and eat a good meal and it’s also maybe not worth the effort preparing that meal takes. But if they have somebody that comes in and seniors also statistically we’ve proven seniors don’t eat as much when they eat alone. And if they’ve got somebody to share a meal with them on a regular basis and that can be a family member, it could be a caregiver then they will eat better. They will be healthier and stronger because of that social connection that’s tied in with the meals. 

But we can come in and help a family, talk through those things with a loved one and even if it’s so often we get families that say well, let’s just try it one day a week, we’ll do that. We’ll come in and help mom or dad. If they need three days a week and they start with one, they’re putting themselves more at risk. So we try to help them say let’s be a little more consistent with it, let’s go with three days a week and let’s get them used to having somebody come in every other day and that helps with that transition. I know that most of our clients now are coming from what we call the silent generation. Most of the greatest generation has passed on. My mother was a part of the greatest generation. She was actually a Marine in World War II. 

She was one of the earliest women Marines after the first six months, when the Marine Corps called them Molly Marines. 

Yes, I’ve heard of that and my mother was in the next six months and she was a school teacher in North Carolina in her mid-twenties and she enlisted to go and help and it really made her, to a large extent, the woman that she was. The Marine Corps and Jesus were who made my mother what she was and she was the greatest generation. And when my mother in her 90s needed home care, she was incredibly resistant because she said I don’t want someone in my home. And we had to say you need someone in your home. The day she called me and said to say you need someone in your home. 

The day she called me and said call me back in 15 minutes. And I said why. And she said I’ll tell you in 15 minutes. Call me back in 15 minutes. And I set a timer and 15 minutes later I called her and she said if I don’t answer the phone, call your brother. Okay, all right. So I called her back and she answered the phone and I said so why did I have to call you back in 15 minutes? And she said I needed to get something from the top shelf of the cabinet in the kitchen. 

0:13:17 – Chris

And. 

0:13:17 – Betsy

I had to climb up on the step ladder to do that. 

She was about 92 years old at that point in time and she lived 500 miles away from me so I couldn’t run over, which is why she said call your brother, right. But she said If I fell, I wanted someone to know that I wasn’t answering the phone and get someone to come over and check on me. Is that when you knew? And we already knew? But that was like, okay, we have to step it up, because at that point she had somebody there three days a week. Now we had to get somebody there seven days a week or say you can’t use the ladder on the days the caregiver’s not here. But that generation and the silent generation is just as independent. Yeah, and the baby boomers are going to be even worse and they’re moving now into I’m on the low end of the baby boomers and I turn 65 next year, so the baby boomers are entering their late 70s now and are actually early 80s Not quite. 

0:14:22 – Chris

Not quite. In 2026, the first baby boomers turn 80. 

0:14:28 – Jess

And I’m impressed that you know that right at the top of your head. Oh, it’s our business to know it. 

0:14:34 – Betsy

But yeah, and that independent streak is a great thing, but it’s also hard when you have to convince someone that, in order to continue to be independent now, they need to let people start helping them. 

0:14:48 – Jess

Yeah, that’s hard to give up your independence Like I get it, but it’s still a hard thing to do. I remember going through that with my dad because he had several strokes and having to let people come in and help. But that’s another question. Finding people to work for your services, to work for your organization is that just a really hard process for you guys, like choosing the right person to come in? 

0:15:15 – Chris

That is the biggest challenge and has been from the beginning. And it’s especially challenging now because you know, since COVID, the service industry in general, I mean you see help wanted signs everywhere All the time and look, we get it. And it’s a difficult thing and you’ve got a somewhat declining workforce to begin with and then people that just don’t have the mentality as much culturally coming along, younger people don’t give of themselves in the same way. I think young people today particularly are very generous in a lot of ways and are very service-oriented in a lot of ways, but it sort of has to be on their terms. 

And this is not an area that they think about as much and it’s harder work and it’s also not something that you can’t have. Somebody says well, I want to do this a little bit long. We kind of have to have some consistency and you have to invest in the clients that you’re working with. But if you’re willing to do that, you don’t have to have any formalized training coming to us. We can take somebody that’s never done this at all but that has the right heart for it, and we can train them, we can put them through on all of that. But what we have to find is people that are willing, have the right heart for it, can pass a criminal background check, can pass a drug screen, cause all those things are required for us and the drug screen is not legally required. The criminal background check is the drug screen is not legally required, but we’ve been doing it for years and it’s just smart. 

You want to know that somebody is going to be reliable there in the home and then we go through and then we work with them and then we want to make sure that you’ve got consistency and that we can make that fit be right, because the other part of that too is that you can have a caregiver that has worked with five clients and they have just gotten rave reviews, and then you get a client that comes along and you place that same caregiver in with them and it is just like fire and gasoline they do not click and that ain’t ever going to work and it’s not a problem with either one of them, because the client may have had other caregivers working with them that loved them. 

And again, sometimes personalities don’t work and we think that they’re going to and they didn’t. So you have to be constantly watching that and monitoring that, and you know we’ve got a client care team that’s monitoring all of that and keeping track of that and communicating back and forth with the clients and with their families, and you know it’s a. There’s a lot of complexities that go with doing this to make sure that it’s there, but we do have to have. You know we need, we need more people and the you said a minute ago about when I said, the first baby boomers will turn 80 in just a couple of years. We know that because the big conversations a few years ago were what’s going to happen with the age wave that they were talking about, and we’re not hearing about it as much anymore. 

0:18:17 – Jess

Right. 

0:18:17 – Chris

Because you know, Betsy and I are trailing age baby boomers here, but the leading edge baby boomers really are about to turn 80. When they were turning 65 is when everybody was getting apoplectic about this. They’re about to be 65. What are we going to do? 65 is not, you know, not old. No, that used to be old. It’s not old anymore. You know, and you know that’s in our 60s now. 

We’re still very active and healthy and vibrant and doing a lot of stuff and we know we work out and we go do all this stuff. That’s not when things really begin to break down. 80 is the magic number. That’s when things begin to happen and 80 is the is is when infirmities begin to catch up with you, particularly if you haven’t been good to yourself, if you haven’t been exercising, if you haven’t been eating well, if you haven’t kept your mind active. 80 is when it’s going to start catching up and at 80, statistically, roughly 50% of people develop some dementia, Alzheimer’s or some kind of related form of dementia that will come on at age 80. So that’s kind of terrifying and we are just about 18 months away now from having 10,000 people a day turn 80. 

0:19:30 – Jess

Wow, lots of information, but helpful information so far. Thanks again to Betsy and Chris Head from Karis Care Services for sitting down and having the conversation with us about aging and caregiving. There are so many people right now who are in need of services or who are trying to help out loved ones. We’re not done. There’s a lot more conversation coming up, so stay tuned for next week’s episode of the Jesus Fixed podcast to hear part two of Aging Gracefully with special guests Betsy and Chris Head from Karis Cares. We’ll see you next week. 

0:20:14 – Announcer

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