Extra eyes and heart from Jennifer and Daisy a Day
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Picture this. Your grandfather, or your father, or someone you care about is living alone. Not in the same city as you. He (or she) is unwell. They need regular medications and they get confused about whether they’ve taken their pills or even had breakfast or lunch. It happens.
Picture this. You’ve just had a hip replacement. You envy your friends who have grown up kids who will be able to help out. You don’t have kids but you need a tremendous amount of help while you recover from your surgery. You need help with bathing, meals, walking, moving around. And later you’ll need help to get to physiotherapy.
Picture this. You’ve just come home with a new baby. After only 12 hours in the hospital, you’re exhausted and worried about your toddler special needs child at home and how you’re going to manage all of it.
We could go on and on. Each one of these cases is pretty typical for Jennifer Buchar and her Daisy a Day care team. Jennifer has been giving respite care of one kind or another since really needing it herself when her daughter was born with only one arm years ago. “I needed respite care them. Now I give respite care,” she says.
It was her job in the early office days of Victoria Village that captured her heart for seniors and ‘birthed’ her business. Jennifer sees so much need for aging seniors who are waiting for long term care accommodation, or seniors who are determined to never move to longterm care. These folks live a precarious life, especially when their children live in another city or province or country. They live a precarious life when they have no children at all.
Jennifer’s team includes a nurse, psw’s, a driver and herself and they can provide just about any service needed–respite, short team, long term, regular or sporadic.
What Jennifer is most excited about is her new service technology, developed with the talent of a business associate. From her smart phone, she can check in on a client, make sure they’re okay, remind them about meds and meals, ask them about their needs. They can talk to each other. This technology can relieve the anxiety of people worried about whether or not their relative is coping at all.
She calls it Wellness Watch and she’s hoping to use it with her clients who want that check-in. Being able to do this remotely keeps their costs down too.
Currently, Daisy a Day is experiencing referral clients from Health Canada, Community Care Access Centre (for clients waiting for long term care but needing help now), from her website (www.daisyadayhomecare.com) and from existing and past customers.
Jennifer offers a number of packages, including the Wellness Watch. Each Wellness Watch installation includes contact numbers for each client linked to the technology, which allows Jennifer immediate contact with client and caregiver.
“I can check hourly. They can speak to me without using dials or understanding any technology,” she says. She already has one client hooked up and happy.
The assessment people at any Community Care Access Centre are well aware of the stages of decline that occur as a person is needing higher levels of service, like longterm care. But availability is going to continue to be a problem as baby boomers age and create incredible demand.
And frequently people come home from hospital to an empty space, without support. One of Jennifer’s services is to prepare the home for convalesence…her team knows how to make a space ready. She’s ready to pick up where the hospital leaves off, reviewing post-op instructions, gathering documents, personal affects, prescriptions, confirming followup appointments and taking people home.
There’s so much. Daisy a Day is there.
Thanks, Jennifer.