You won’t find a more professional and caring in-home care provider to address the needs of elder loved ones experiencing serious health and end-of-life challenges.
Typically, web reviews are short and provide a score with a few descriptive words. If that’s all you are looking for, then:
If on the other hand you want a more in-depth account of an extraordinary care provider and her in-home care services company because finding the best care for your loved is critically important and worth digging into some background to make an informed decision, then I offer the following account of a truly amazing care provider that represents all the best attributes your aging loved one deserves...
When we began our search for in-home care services in early 2022, our 88 year old mother had recently fallen and broken her hip. Initially, after her stay at the hospital and the rehab center, she came home feeling exhausted and weakened from not eating enough. After finally starting to feel better, she was dealt another medical set back. Experiencing debilitating stomach cramps, she was diagnosed with having an obstructed bowel - the result of fibrous tissue build up. To fix the problem required surgery which was very close to the limit of what our mom could endure. The hospital pushed to have designated for hospice care. At that point our family decided to bring her home. She needed 24/7 care immediately as she was too weak to even sit up in a hospital bed. We felt fortunate that we were able t find a 24/7 in-home care provider that was able to start immediately, but she was only available for one month. That one month proved to be a critically important month that would have profound a impact on my mom’s future care. In nothing short of a miracle, Mom’s strength gradually came back, and her appetite improved enough that she was able to come off the IV drip nutrition and eat real food. But the game changer was yet to come.
While our family felt so blessed that our mom appeared to once again be on the path to recovery, we knew we had to find a new 24/7 in-home care person and we had a bit of beginner’s luck with the high] quality of our first in-home care person. She had crossed our radar by way of friend whose spouse had just passed who had been receiving care from the in-home care provider. We would have been happy to have her stay on with our family, but she lived 125.miles away and wanted to be closer to home with her next client family.
Not wanting to rely on having someone landing in our laps and at the same time time not knowing exactly how to proceed with finding someone, as a first step we did a Google search. This led us to www.Care.com a website that acts as a one-stop shop for finding service providers with offerings ranging from pet sitting and childcare to various home services relating to eldercare.
In our search, we found experience levels varied widely, but one company started to stand out above the rest: S and J Home Services.
Within very short order, we had set up 6 interviews with prospective agencies. I wanted to make the interviews as productive as possible so with each of the 6 candidates I offered to have a one-on-one prep call to provide background information about what we were looking for and also provide some insight into my parent's personality quirks (for example, although my dad had been retired almost twenty years he preferred to be addressed as “Doctor”.) Of the 6 only 2 set up prep calls with me and only Sabrina Harris, the President and founder of S and J Home Services called my dad, “Doctor”. It may seem like an insignificant detail, but to my Dad, it conveyed respect. Sabrina crushed the interview. From that initial meeting, I knew that Sabrina was someone we could trust to put our mom’s needs as her top priority and that nothing would "fall between the cracks" Within a short period of time she had a 24/7 coverage plan in place.
The primary motivation for having a trained professional in-home care provider was to help our mom stay safe during her ongoing recovery. However, we soon began to realize that having Sabrina and her team caring for my mom provided a surprising secondary benefit. I became much less anxious about what and how my mom was doing. I knew nothing was going to stop her from misbehaving, but it gave me comfort knowing I had done everything I could to manage the risks around her next time falling or injuring herself, In Sabrina, I had the best person I could ever hope to have working with my mom.
Feeling less anxiety I consistently slept better as a direct result of having S and J Home Services support my mom. With their unwavering commitment to her health and well-being our family worried less and were able to focus more on helping our mom live her best life (which as it turns out was not always welcomed and remains an on-going source of contention.) We were initially taken by surprise that our mom seemed who was so reserved and accommodating, actually had very definite ideas about what constituted her best life which was often very different than what we felt was appropriate. Specifically, our mom (a very reserved and soft-spoken person) was, much to our surprise) fiercely independent and would go to great lengths to protect her right to engage in activities that put her at risk of injury. But all her life she maintained an orderly house rearing two kids and caring for her husband (married 65 years before he passed last year!!). This continues to be a topic of loving yet sometimes adversarial battles of wills as she is unrelenting in wanting to do tasks around the house that could be easily delegated.
Her ability to thwart our attempts at keeping her healthy and safe often tries our patience. Fortunately, regarding the value of continued long term in-home care, she reluctantly agrees there is value in not being hame alone for extended periods and she has agreed to keep S and J Home Services on with us. This serves a vital ulterior purpose which is having someone tracking what our mom is doing when we are not with her. Given she has experienced additional falls - one time last year spending several hours on the floor in the bedroom at night after passing out from an episode of Orthostatic hypotension before Sabrina arrived in the morning, not even my mom could deny that having someone with her wasn’t a good idea. Another dimension our mom’s care that we are so grateful for that we were unaware of its’ importance that S and J Home services provides is advanced wound care. With inherently poor balance our mom is prone to bumping into things and she has very delicate skin that breaks easily and bruises quite heavily to the extent that infection was always a concern especially because our mom’s default behavior is to conceal her wounds making for a potentially dangerous health situation. There was a time our mom had a nasty contusion on her forearm which thankfully Sabrina spotted and very carefully addressed. Upon taking her to an urgent care facility, the doctor on call was very complementary of Sabrina’s bandaging technique which was a very gentle on her skin while accord to the doctor very likely prevented the wound from getting worse and that the urgent care facility would start stocking the supplies needed to incorporate her technique into their best practices! That day we were extra grateful for Sabrina!!!
Our mom represents a textbook example of the challenges that eldercare must address to be effective. Care providers must be patient yet persistent, sensitive yet thick skinned, gentle yet tough, trusting yet questioning as well able to say adapt to persistently changing care requirements.
In the case of our mom, Sabrina has been absolutely critical in her on-going care including:
In the past year, Sabrina has become a de facto member of our family and her caring for our mom has gone beyond a simple services relationship. In particular, Sabrina formed a close relationship with our dad. Sadly, he passed late last year from complications of advanced Parkinson’ s Disease. For several decades he was a respected physician in Monterey County. Throughout his career he was always very demanding of his nursing staff. He felt an obligation to provide his patients with the best possible care thereby enabling the best possible outcomes. He was equally demanding of service providers from gardeners and construction contractors to auto mechanics and restaurant wait staff. Our dad was generous with those he dealt with that shared his passion for doing excellent work and treating others with honesty and respect and brutal to those who didn’t. That he willingly embraced coming to rely on Sabrina for what became a substantial care requirement in the final stages of his life, speaks to what a deep level of trust he had In Sabrina. I credit Sabrina with keeping our dad comfortable, calm and at peace with his place in the world that allowed him to be at the home he designed, located in rural Monterey County surrounded by family (including Sabrina) the morning he passed away which was his final wish.
-BDK
