Companionship
Exploring passions, community engagement, planning social visits
At Family Tree, we believe that older adults deserve the highest quality of life available. Today, 43% of seniors report feeling lonely regularly and 59% of them are more likely to decline in their ability to perform daily living activities. A professional caregiver can improve the quality of life for aging adults by keeping them safe, healthy, engaged and active.
Companionship
In addition to providing seniors an escape from loneliness, professional caregivers discuss current events, share stories, browse photo albums, play games, share meals, and more.
Exploring passions
What you can’t do alone, we can do together. Our compassionate staff will work with you to rediscover what you love to do and then help you engage in a few of your passions during every visit.
Community engagement
Are you a member of a religious group, country club, or social organization? Are you passionate about a charity? We’ll work hard so you have the opportunity to continue being involved in and having an impact on your community. We can be as involved or as “behind the scenes” as you like.
Connecting with family and friends
In person or through today’s newest technologies, don’t miss an important moment in your children’s’ or grandchildren’s’ lives. Let us help you connect regularly with those you love the most.
Personal Care
Bathing, transferring, dressing, grooming, toileting
Today, about 40% of adults age 65+ need help with daily living activities and nearly 70% will require assistance at some point in their lives. Here are some of our common supportive services:
Dressing
Nearly 50% of caregivers report assisting their care recipient with dressing. Dressing is a high-level balance activity that creates vulnerabilities for older adults. When surveyed, we’ve also learned that well over a quarter of older adults believe the ability to dress is extremely important to a high quality of life. Our team respectfully helps our clients with dressing tasks ranging from laying out the appropriate clothing to assisting a client who is bed-bound with their desire to dress nicely for important visits from friends, family, and congregation.
Bathing + Hygiene
Family caregivers report bathing is one of the three hardest activities to assist their loved ones. While the care recipient may insist on bathing alone, the bathroom is one of the most common areas of the home where older adults fall. More importantly, bathrooms (and kitchens) often cause the most severe injury from falls due to the proximity of hazardous objects and flooring. Our team can assess our client’s bathroom and ensure the environment is as safe as possible. In addition, our staff is trained on proper transferring techniques to help ensure the care recipient’s bathing is safe and comfortable.
Transferring + Walking
Each year, 2.5 million older adults are treated in emergency departments for fall-related injuries. Similarly, more than 95% of hip fractures (a common reason for requesting our services) are caused by falling. Our team uses best practices from the most current research to ensure our clients have the appropriate assistive devices, including walkers, wheelchairs, patient lifting device, sliding boards, raised toilet seats, and more. In addition, our team will kindly reinforce the use of the proper assistive device when compliance is a concern.
Toileting + Continence
Whether your loved one needs minor help using the toilet or full assistance as a result of decreased bladder and/or bowel control, our team can help. While family caregivers report dealing with incontinence is the most difficult individual activity to assist their loved one, incontinence is a normal part of aging and we’ll ensure your loved one feels comfortable and dignified when requiring our assistance. We remain calm and use a matter of fact approach. We work with clients on bladder training exercise and we’ll monitor our clients for urinary tract infections.
Eating + Feeding
Depending on the level of assistance required from our client, we can help with everything from cutting food to feeding our clients who are unable to feed themselves. When needed, our senior caregivers will also help follow speech therapy instructions on swallowing and aspiration precautions.
Meal Preparation
Grocery shopping and cooking
Family recipes? We’re happy to dust them off and help prepare some of your favorite meals. While remaining conscious of dietary restrictions, our team can assist in preparing breakfast, lunch, dinner, and light snacks.
Depending on your circumstances, out team can help with groceries and other shopping activity. We can go together or we can go on your behalf, whichever you prefer.
Household & Pet Assistance
Laundry, light housekeeping, pet care and organization
Household Assistance
Whatever they may be, we can help with daily domestic chores: wash dishes, change bed linens, run the laundry, fold clothes and/or put them away, return bath towels and wash cloths, clean the bathroom after use, water plants, dust surfaces, pick up clutter, empty trash and take out trash cans to the curb, vacuum and sweep main walk areas. We can even organize your shelves, closets, and cabinets. Need help ironing a shirt? We can help with that, too.
Pet Care
Numerous studies show the benefits pets bring to seniors. In fact, interactions with pets produce a chemical reaction in the brain associated with lowering stress levels. Interactions with pets have been shown to reduce blood pressure and can actually fight depression and protect against heart conditions. Interactions with pets can also stimulate physical activity and give seniors a feeling of purpose, both of which promote healthy living.
At Family Tree, we LOVE pets and we love taking care of your pets. While many seniors or their children feel they need to give their pet up because it’s become to hard to care for, our care team can assist with dog walking, feeding, and other miscellaneous tasks that protect the important relationship between a pet and their owner.
Medication Assistance
Medication management, monitoring vitals
Home care has traditionally been a “non-medical” service, but we felt that we weren’t doing enough for our clients at home. Frankly, nearly every client returning home from a care facility has at least one medical condition that needs to be closely monitored, at least for some period of time. While many of our clients go home with home health services covered under Medicare, they commonly find it’s not enough to meet their needs and they desire assistance to fill the gaps.
One service that’s commonly needed but often refused by other companies is medication assistance. Most companies aren’t allowed to do any more than “remind” the care recipient. While for some, that’s enough, for many they need slightly more assistance such as removing the medications from the pill box, assisting with vitals, crushing medication with food, assisting with injections and more. With our unique team-based approach, your dedicated nurse will work with you and your caregiver to ensure your needs are met, whatever they are.
Comparison to Independent Hire and Traditional Home Care Providers
Nursing Care
Medication administration, g-tube feedings, dressing changes, moderate wound care
We know the average stay for older adults in acute care settings is shorter than ever as healthcare shifts out of the hospitals and into the homes. This means patients are often returning home with more complex needs than ever before. These individuals require a team of professionals to work together to reduce their risk of unsafe occurrences that lead to hospital readmissions and exacerbations of their medical condition(s).
Until now, few home care companies were equipped to deal with patients’ complex medical needs at home, but Family Tree is leading the way forward by utilizing the expertise and experience of trained nurses who help manage your loved one’s medical condition. If your loved one wants to come home, we want to remove the barriers presented by medical needs like feeding tubes and insulin administration. Our nurses can directly care for your loved one or supervise our caregivers with some of the following complex medical needs:
- Medication administration, including insulin
- Gastrostomy Feeding Tube
- Dressing changes
- Moderate wound care
- And more…
Comparison to Traditional Home Care Providers
Disease Specialties
Experienced management of Alzheimers, Parkinson’s , ALS, MS, Diabetes, and COPD
Our professional caregivers and nurses are trained in our advanced training lab and have experience in managing a variety of diseases, including Alzheimers, Dementia, Parkinson’s , ALS, MS, Diabetes, and COPD, just to name a few. In addition, we have experience managing a variety of health concerns such as:
- Stroke
- Arthritis
- Heart disease
- Cancer
- Respiratory disease
- Osteoporosis
- Influenza and pneumonia
To learn more about our specialty disease programs, click here.
Transportation
Errands, medical appointments, social outings
In addition to transfer assistance in and out of the vehicle, we can use our vehicle or our client’s vehicle to assist with transport to medical appointments, community activities, religious and family events, and more.
Need an escort? Learn more about Ride With Family Tree™, a partnership with Uber Technologies that’s improving access to care and making it easier than ever for seniors to get to where they need to go.
Transition Home & Home Safety
Receive a comprehensive home safety evaluation for your loved one performed by a Family Tree home safety expert with same day service.
Home Safety Program
The Program
- We conduct a comprehensive 144 point safety evaluation of your home, available same day with 4-hour advanced notice
- Evaluations are performed by a clinical professional trained in our proprietary home safety methodology
- We deliver a comprehensive report with clear instructions for executing the home safety plan (including pictures) within 24 hours
- Most safety appointments last between 2 and 3 hours including drive time, assessment, and reporting
Transition Home Program
The Program
- We safely transport you from the hospital to your home, picking up medications and running necessary errands on the way home
- Appointments can be made by phone or email 7 days a week
- Once in the home, our care professional can stay with you for as short as 4 hours or up to 24 hours (overnight)
- Most home transitions from the hospital last 4 hours including drive time and medication pick-up
Home Modification
Family Tree has partnered with Next Day Access to perform home safety modifications.Next Day Access is a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS), a designation developed by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) in collaboration with AARP and other experts. This special certification is achieved through training and testing during a multicourse educational program. A Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist understands the unique needs of the older adult population and is knowledgeable about aging-in-place home modifications, common remodeling projects and solutions to common barriers. Next Day Access is our trusted partner in all home modification projects.
Receive 10% off home modifications with promo code “FamilyTree.” Contact Jesse Martin at Next Day Access today at (713) 344-0031 for all your home modification needs.