Firstlight Resources

Caregiving doesn’t stop if your loved one is hospitalized

From our Care Blog

Today we handed the spotlight over to Martine Ehrenclou, M.A., an award-winning author and patient advocate, who shared her personal experiences of handling the care and hospitalization of her mother and godmother and how others can navigate the intimidating hospital world. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. Have a great weekend, all! -- Jeff Bevis I began my journey into advocacy eleven years ago when my mother and godmother were patients in hospitals for very lengthy stays (five months and seven months respectively.) I was not prepared for what I saw and experienced with their...

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Stress Awareness Month: Stress stops here

From our Care Blog

April is Stress Awareness Month, a national effort sponsored by The Health Resource Network (HRN) to inform people about the dangers of stress, offer coping strategies and disprove harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society. Prominent writer Martin Boroson, author of One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go, published an article yesterday on Huffington Post about “stresscalation”—the way in which we pass our stress to other people, often unwillingly. Boroson challenged readers to vow not to pass their stress on to others for one day, in honor of National Stress Awareness Day on April 16. It’s...

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Caring for the Caregiver

From our Care Blog

I’m excited to introduce you to LeAnn Thieman, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Caregiver’s Soul. She has provided a great guest post for our readers about caring for the caregiver. Strong bonds between family members are crucial to any healthy relationship. However, caregivers often require additional support from family members as they carry both the young and older relatives on their shoulders. LeAnn does a great job of offering advice to help care for the caregiver in your family.   Terry stacks the breakfast dishes into the sink, hands the freshly-packed lunchboxes to her son and daughter, bundles them...

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FirstLight Home Care of Contra Costa Receives Home Care Pulse Certification

From our Care Blog

We’re excited to announce that our location in Walnut Creek, California, has received its Home Care Pulse Certification, a certification program dedicated to the measurement of client and employee satisfaction scores. Home Care Pulse created the certification program to measure key satisfaction aspects of its in-home care delivery as well as the level of satisfaction of the caregiving staff. This certification requires an agency to be reviewed monthly and includes the evaluation of areas such as loyalty, benchmarking improvements, client and employee interviews, caregiver performance, caregiver morale, agency incentives and caregiver rewards to name a few. Local franchisee David Bonacci...

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Get involved! A little goes a long way

From our Care Blog

Brian Kreindler, owner of FirstLight Home Care in Columbus, Ohio, is facilitating a Current Events Talk and luncheon for seniors next week at his local Jewish Community Center. The luncheon will focus on discussing politics and the upcoming election. Events like this are a great way for seniors to GET INVOLVED and interact with others in the community. It also gives Brian a chance to network with other small business owners and potential clients in the area. For those of you who are looking to become more active in your community or want to volunteer and make a positive contribution...

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Connecting with a person who has Alzheimer’s Disease

From our Care Blog

I'm excited to share another guest post with our readers today. Ellen Woodward Potts is the co-author of A Pocket Guide for the Alzheimer’s Caregiver and here she discusses how to connect with a loved one who has Alzheimer's Disease and shares some of her own personal experiences. At FirstLight, we believe if you have met one person with dementia, you've only met one person. That is, each individual will talk, act, remember, and behave differently, not simply because of what stage of dementia they are in, but because they are who they are. That's why we've developed a unique...

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Hospitals need to revamp to cater to aging population

From our Care Blog

According to a recent article on USA Today’s website, an astonishing one-third of hospital patients older than 70 leave more frail than when they arrived. Further research shows that even after they are released, nursing home care or rehabilitation can be necessary. The elder care experts quoted in the article believe that this is a result of “conventional hospital care focusing on treating disease rather than preventing frailty.” So what can be done to help better the quality of care our elderly are receiving? Many hospitals have implemented walking programs to help get the seniors out of bed and moving—a...

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Caregiving Does Not Discriminate

From our Care Blog

I'm happy to introduce another guest blogger this week. Cindy Laverty is a nationally recognized caregiving expert who has dedicated her life to empowering caregivers. Today, she discusses her personal experiences as a family caregiver. Caregiving does not discriminate and caregiving usually happens when we least expect it. If not managed in an organized way from the beginning, it has the potential to rock and wrack your world. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. I know this to be true, because it happened to me. Several years ago, I was one of those people literally...

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When the daughter becomes the mother

From our Care Blog

Today’s post was written for us by Cindy Smith, a close friend and client of FirstLight Home Care. Here’s what she has to say about her experiences finding care for her elderly mother. I never expected to become a mother again at the age of 50. It was the first in a series of shocks. However, the person I am taking care of is not a child. It is my mother, one of the most precious people in my life. My father was always the healthy one, the strong one, invincible in his own way. Never been in the hospital,...

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FirstLight Home Care scores high on franchisee satisfaction surveys

From our Care Blog

Great news to share as we cap off another week here at FirstLight! We’ve been ranked #22 on Franchise Business Review’s list of the Top 50 franchise systems that rank highest in franchisee satisfaction. We are the youngest franchise system EVER to make the Top 50 rankings so this is a huge milestone for the company! The rankings are based on a survey that asked franchisees questions related to training and support, system communication, franchisor/franchisee relations, financial opportunity, business lifestyle, and overall satisfaction with their business. Ninety-three percent of FirstLight’s franchisees participated in the Franchise Business Review satisfaction survey. The...

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