Season 4, Episode 19: Aging Gracefully with Betsy and Chris Head (Part 2)

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. Welcome back, or welcome to our conversation about caring for our aging and elderly, with a special guest, Betsy and Chris Head from Karis Care. If you missed part one, as always you can catch every episode of the Jesus Fixed podcast in the Spirit FM app, on spiritfm.com and wherever you enjoy listening to your podcast and picking up from part one. I was asking how do you plan? I’m a planner. I plan for everything. So if you are preparing to take care of somebody who is aging, do you have a timetable or do you plan for what? If, how do you plan for all of that? 

0:01:10 – Chris

A timetable, not so much, but a what if. Because the timetable can shift all over the place. You can have people I mean gosh, we’ve had caregivers working for us into their 90s that were still active and vibrant and wonderful and phenomenal caregivers, I mean, and you would never know that they were that old. Looking at them, they’re just very, very healthy people. So you can’t really put it on a time frame like that, but an event. If this happens, then this is what I want to have happen, absolutely. That’s a good idea, okay. 

0:01:43 – Betsy

And also I have a friend who talks about how to age healthy and she says anything you want to be able to do into your 80s and 90s you should be doing now, every day. So if you want to be able to continue climbing stairs, find ways to climb stairs every day Now, whatever age you are. If you want to be able to get down on the floor and play with grandkids and then get yourself back up, do that now, every day several times. If you want to be able to continue to get independently up off your sofa or a low-seated chair, be doing that every day several times. Like she’ll say, do 10 in a set. Do 10 sit-to-stands several times a day, just through the course of your day. 

It’s like doing desk exercises in an office. You just want to do those things and that way you can continue to get up and off of a low seat, wherever that seat might be, even in the bathroom. You can continue to get in your bathtub and take a bath, unless an event happens, like a broken hip or a knee replacement that restricts your movement. Get in your bathtub and take a bath, unless an event happens like a broken hip or a knee replacement that restricts your movement. But it is much more about ability and loss of ability. And if you feel yourself beginning to lose ability in a particular joint area, say a shoulder, to be able to continue pulling your shirt off at night by yourself, you need to be reaching up every day and letting your shoulders stay able to do that, unless you’ve had an injury. Because if we stop doing those things, those joints stiffen as we age and then suddenly it’s harder to do those things and maybe a little painful and we don’t want to start doing them again. So we need to do them now. 

I told my mom when she began to slow down in her mid-90s the caregiver had gotten into the routine of walking to the mailbox, which was down a fairly long driveway, maybe 20 yards, 60 feet down a slight incline, and my mom would start to go down and the caregiver would say you sit there, I’ll go down and get the mail. And I said, no, you can’t do that, you have to let my mom walk down with you. Good for you to go with her because she had a fall risk, oh yeah, but you walk down with her because she needs to continue getting out of her chair and walking, because that kept her mobile a lot longer, but she died in 2017 at the age of 97. 

0:04:27 – Jess

Oh wow. 

0:04:28 – Betsy

And she was able to maintain her independence in the home where I grew up until the day she died, but she did that because she had help. 

So that hiring caregivers I would pick up with that question to say, as Chris said, we always knew it would be the biggest challenge and since COVID it has certainly been a much harder challenge. 

There are great people out there that can be wonderful caregivers and we can teach them everything they need to know, so they don’t have to be nurses to be great caregivers and we can teach them everything they need to know, so they don’t have to be nurses to be great caregivers. 

And if you’ve got folks that listen to your podcast that think, oh, I cared for my aging parents, I’m retired now, I’ve got some time and they would like to find meaningful work that’s going to pay them to come to work and take good care of them as a caregiver, we would love for them to reach out and talk to us, because we are always hiring, always looking for great caregivers and they’re not always, although a lot of them are CNAs, certified nurse assistants, nurse assistants that aren’t certified. We don’t require that they have that certification to work for us. If they do. Of course, we hire them as well as long as they’ve got the other pieces of it, and the biggest part of it is heart. It’s not ability, it’s heart, because we can teach ability and guide on ability. I can’t teach anybody to have a compassionate heart. 

0:05:59 – Jess

Right, I’m glad you said that, because I was going to say, yeah, everybody needs a paycheck these days, but just doing it only for the paycheck. This is a job nobody wants, just for the paycheck and then another thing somebody had actually questioned if you had to have certifications in order to be a caregiver, but you answered that question. 

0:06:21 – Betsy

Yeah, we are Is training and we do all the training that is necessary to provide care up through a higher level of personal care. Our nurses do hands-on training with caregivers to give them the skill set that they need. But, of course, if they’ve had that in a formal setting like a training class, that’s awesome and we would love to talk with them too. 

0:06:44 – Jess

Yeah, do you do CPR classes and training and stuff like that? 

0:06:47 – Betsy

Interesting. You would ask that we were just having that conversation yesterday. A number of our caregivers have CPR certification but we were just discussing. We’ve never required it and we’ve never offered it and we just yesterday said in a team meeting we need to look at what we need to do to add that to our training curriculum Because it is something that would be beneficial for every caregiver. Every caregiver is not going to want to do it and that’s okay Because there is risk involved with performing CPR on someone and some of our caregivers just would not be comfortable with that. But I would say probably more will than won’t. 

0:07:26 – Jess

Do you offer any services that help with emotional care or mental health care? I know there are so many aging parents or aging parents who are going through loneliness or who are just dealing with a host of mental health issues as well, so do you recommend any services for them, or do you provide any emotional and mental health support yourself? 

0:07:51 – Chris

We don’t provide that ourselves, but we can recommend various places that we could refer to for counseling if somebody needs that. But it’s interesting, the loneliness loneliness when you’ve got somebody coming in tends to go away. And what’s been so interesting over the years and I mean you could not begin to number the times this exact thing has happened where somebody has said you know, I’m not going to have anybody in, and they finally get convinced to have one person come in. Then they end up saying, well, she or he can come because they really were very, very good, but nobody else. And then you know you can’t limit it to that, because then what if they can’t come? What if something happens? They can’t come and you need the care. Then we have to say, well, you liked me and you like her, and our nurse comes by to do a visit from time to time and you like her, we want to introduce you to one more. I think you’ll like them too. 

And then, little by little, they begin to get comfortable with the idea that it’s not strangers coming in, because you’re only stranger the first time, right, yeah, where a client who was a home economics teacher and a caregiver that came in, who in conversation said you know, I never really knew how to cook and the client ends up saying, well, let’s get in the kitchen. And the client ends up teaching the caregiver and suddenly the client has purpose in all of that. I love that. I mean that actually happened to us and just oh, I mean they’re just happy as a clam, both of them with doing that and the family watching this are like you know. Mom suddenly has meaning again in life and she’s thrilled because she’s doing what she always did and it’s finding those things or telling stories and there’s so much about caregiving. That is just relationship. It’s not all hands-on doing and that’s part of the difference in the home care world versus a skilled home health world where the home health everything is based on coming in and performing a specific task Transactional. 

It’s very, very transactional and what we do is really more about relationships and making other things of life in general come to life. I mean, it’s a wonderful thing to watch. The other thing, too, is when you’re dealing with clients that are an end of life and you have some caregivers that can be very hard on a caregiver. If they get very, very close to a client then they have to say goodbye. 

I would imagine, and some people can do that and some people can’t. That’s very hard for them but that does happen. But there are also some caregivers that are extraordinarily gifted spiritually to be able to do exactly that. And we had a caregiver years ago who was a. She was a large woman. I don’t mean that she was heavy, she was tall and big, I mean she was just a big woman and looked rather imposing when she walked in. 

And I remember one client that we had that the daughter knew that we needed somebody to be with her mom as she was winding down and she was under hospice care. And the caregiver walked in the room and the daughter looked up and saw this presence come into the room and said oh no, this is never going to work, this is not going to work. And the caregiver just walked right up and sat down and took that lady’s hand. And the daughter told us this with tears in her eyes that the mom looked up at her and made eye contact with her and she said the caregiver told her her name and smiled at her. And the client looked up and said you’re here to help me, aren’t you? 

0:12:03 – Jess

Oh my goodness. And she said yes, ma’am, I am. 

0:12:05 – Chris

And the daughter said, oh, this is going to be very special. And it was not many days later that the client passed away holding her daughter’s hand in one hand and that caregiver’s hand in the other hand. And that’s special. I mean, that’s just special to be able to be a part of that and to help facilitate that, um, and that’s, you know, that’s, that’s what we do so a lot of families that call us. 

0:12:42 – Betsy

Their first question is does Medicare pay for this? Um, it does not. It will in certain circumstances, but only if it’s coming through an agency that is a part of that system and it’s not a home care agency. It’s a medical agency that has a home care arm and the Medicare Supplemental Policy is written specifically to be able to cover this. It’s really a small group right now. 

I have said for 23 years Medicare will eventually cover this because it’s going to have to, but they still haven’t moved it far enough. It’s on its infancy journey, I believe, at this point. So Medicare does not. Medicaid will provide long-term care services but, as Chris said earlier, only for people who qualify for Medicaid and are part of that system, and there are people who are living at that poverty level that will qualify for Medicaid. We don’t participate in the Medicaid program with CARES because it doesn’t reimburse enough for us to cover the cost of what we’re doing with the caregivers and what we’re paying them and how we’re taking care of them with benefits and then the overhead, because if you participate with them, they’re going to adjust that cost down to their allowable amount. 

Right. So the way most people pay for this is either through private pay or through long-term care insurance that has a home care rider, and that’s an important thing to look for for people who are looking at purchasing long-term care insurance. I’ve gotten pretty good at reading policies for that kind of language because I’ve done this now for 23 years, and also there are other creative ways to pay for this that people may not know about. Things like a veteran has benefits that they can use for home care for both themselves and their spouse if they were serving during a time of war, and there are a lot of veterans right now aging into home care that we’re serving during time of war, and we are affiliated with organizations that can provide funding for that, and we can help them connect to those organizations that don’t have to be using us for us to give that information. There are also other creative funding sources that are just coming to light for us Things that use life insurance policies and reverse mortgages, which are a lot better now than they were when they first came on the market. When reverse mortgages first came on the market, I looked at that and thought, oh my gosh, I don’t want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. But we have seen that program really get regulated a lot better and now it’s a much better program. And then there are ways that we can find to supplement services for families who need a lot better and know it’s a much better program. And then there are ways that we can find to supplement services for families who need a lot of care. 

The bottom line on this is someone who truly needs around the clock care. It’s a very expensive service and it is cheaper to go into facility care if you need around the clock care. But facility care is not going to be one-on-one care and most people don’t need around the clock care. They can be in the home for periods of time without having a caregiver with them. And so the other question that everybody asks us is how much does it cost? It depends upon what you need. So it’s. 

I can’t just say it’s not like going in a store and buying a shirt and looking at the price tag, because care is individual. It’s, so every person’s care is designed to meet their needs and that’s what dictates what it’s going to cost. But we’ve got a range of prices and a range of services and we can work with every family we work with to come up with a solution that best meets their needs, and do that compassionately and with grace. So, Karis, our name means grace. Our name means grace. Chris and I are Believers and we try to run our business and make our decisions based on our faith, walk and where God leads us in this, and God has blessed us tremendously through this. So our new name, Karis, is reflective of God’s grace in our lives and in the lives of our team at the office and our caregivers and our clients, and in the lives of our team at the office and our caregivers and our clients and their families, because we see that at work all the time. 

0:17:03 – Jess

That’s beautiful. Your website, say your website All this Kariscares.com. 

0:17:08 – Chris

K-a-r-i-s cares, c-a-r-e-s so Kariscares.com. 

0:17:13 – Jess

Okay, and now this is personal, but I ask every guest who comes to Jesus, fix it. If you could have Jesus fix one thing I know there are tons of things in this world right now, maybe tons of things in your own personal life, but just big or small if you could ask Jesus to fix one thing for you right now, what would it be? 

0:17:33 – Betsy

I would say for the company, the caregiver shortage. 

0:17:37 – Chris

I was about to say the same we need an army of people. 

0:17:41 – Jess

Yeah, y’all heard that they need an army. Karis Care, Betsy and Chris Head. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you, Jess. 

0:17:55 – Announcer

Life’s not perfect. That’s why God gave us friends like Melody and Candi. Check out QuirksBumpsandBruises.com or search Quirks, Bumps, and Bruises wherever you listen to podcasts.