My call to action: Senior Living Link
Posted by Donna Mae Scheib on August 25, 2015
My call to action: Senior Living Link
Empowering you in finding a senior living home
A 92-year-old woman, who we shall call Ruth for the purpose of this story, has Alzheimer’s dementia. She was living in an assisted living facility when her children realized she required more care than what the assisted living facility could offer. She was a fall risk because she would wander during night sleeping hours and required intensive care on assistance with taking her medications and with personal hygiene. The family thought about hiring private caregivers but it turned out to be expensive for 24 hours of care. They then contacted a well-known placement agency who they saw on television for help in finding a new home for their mother. The agency assigned them to an advisor. The advisor contacted them to acquaint himself with their care needs and financial capabilities. The advisor then sends a mass email to adult family homes who matched the family description. The interested adult family homes then contact the family and both scheduled a visit to meet at the facility. The adult family home taught the family about their policy and procedures and state law and regulations. Once the family decided on where to place Ruth, the placement agency was notified. For the family, there is no cost for this service. For the adult family home, 100% of the first month’s rent, is the fee for the placement of Ruth into their home.
In my years of managing and consulting adult family homes (a type of residential care facility) in Seattle, Washington, this story is far too common. Families seek a home with a higher level of care for their loved ones and are startled as where to begin. Placement agencies seem to be the only answer aside from getting a word of mouth referral from someone else who has been through the same process. Because most adult family homes are small businesses and are operated by a single person provider, marketing their business becomes a daunting task, not to mention a costly one. The time for taking care of their residents and managing their staff is limited. Providers may also not have the expertise to market and find residents to fill their own vacancies. Adult family homes, therefore, have naturally progressed in the use of placement agencies for their business. For many, placement agencies are the only way they can continually keep their doors open when they have vacancies. For others, they decline to work with the agencies because they deem the placement fee unfair. My passion for offering families and senior living facilities another method to connect with one another intensified after witnessing the upsurge of these similar happenings. Senior Living Link was born.
I developed Senior Living Link primarily because I wanted to give people seeking a senior living home another option for finding the perfect home for them or their loved ones. I also wanted to scrap the monopoly in the senior living facilities that only relied on placement agencies to provide their much-demanded services. Finding a senior living home is a large and intimidating process, some would say a journey. The first question is usually where do I begin? For many families, the first step is contacting a placement agency from either a television, trusted friend, or from a social worker. Families then work closely with the assigned advisor to lead their charge.
Not all placement agencies and care advisors are the same. The story above describes one large agency but there are many other large agencies that are more hands-on in their approach. Meaning, the care advisors join you when touring homes that they feel best fits your circumstance. This hands-on approach is invaluable to you when finding the perfect home. There are other stand-alone agents who work alone and have their own agency. These advisors tend to be so hands on that they will feel like part of your family after the journey. The fees that each placement agency charge your chosen home is not always 125% of first month’s rent. It is a common ongoing rate these days, but some may charge as low as 50% of the first month’s rent. For a small business like adult family homes, this fee is still significant. Make no mistake about it. The placement service is free to you but placing families into a home is a business and monetary gains accrue due to being part of their network.
The advantage of having placement advisors to guide you through this process is that good advisors have narrowed down potential homes not only based on your checklist but their own. Many make prior crosschecking to make sure that the homes they refer you to, are safe and are not being closed down for noncompliance by the state. Essentially, the advisors vouch for the homes they take you through. The disadvantage of this may be that you may not be able to visit homes that are not on the radar or attention of the advisors. Many homes aren’t well marketed to be known by care advisors. A dedicated care advisor always looks for more homes to add to their Rolodex. Another problem is that most many well serviced homes don’t work with placement advisors avoiding the fees.
Many people have increasingly avoided agents or “middlemen” and want to do their own research independently from anyone’s guidance and biases. For these people, it’s an even a longer and windy road in their process to find a perfect home. Most people research for places online. There are many drawbacks to this. For one, many facilities are small businesses owned by people who don’t have a website either because they aren’t computer savvy, or because they are too busy running their operations, the finances, or the wherewithal to create a website let alone keep it updated. Furthermore, this person will need to go through thousands of different websites with inconsistent quality of information and delivery methods and one can easily get inundated with all this information.
In my frustration of working with families who fall in the hands of not well-equipped placement advisors, I felt a passionate drive to do something about it. I created Senior Living Link so that families don’t get stuck in having to rely on placement advisors to find a perfect senior living home for them. I wanted to empower families by giving them another option to take this undertaking into their own hands. And for people already seeking homes without an agent, I wanted to give them a user-friendly all-encompassing tool to avoid weeding through inconsistent and cumbersome websites. I also wanted families to be able to link directly to homes, whether the homes are contracted with a placement agent or not. I wanted equal information sharing platform across the board so as to eliminate the filtering process of an advisor and personal biases. And for facilities, I wanted to give them an outlet to market their services and their facilities without having to pay such demanding placement fees.
My mission with Senior Living Link is to become your primary source for researching and ultimately finding a perfect home for you or your loved one. I encourage you to browse around Senior Living Link and see for yourself how we can be of service to you and your family. Please also spread the news that we are here, live, and passionate about helping you find your perfect senior living home in your own terms.
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