Chris Gerardi, President, HomeHelpers Franchise in Chicago
NCBAC: Good morning Chris. It is so good to hear your voice. How are you doing?
Chris Gerardi: Just great. And, how are you doing?
NCBAC: Well, I just came through a “bout” with pneumonia, but I am really thanking God I’m still alive but realizing how fragile we all are…. It gave me such empathy especially for you and your care givers. I can’t imagine how all of you are doing under the circumstances of this pandemic. I value this chance to speak with you. I want to stick to the questions I sent you, but if there is anything that you decide to say or need to tell me, we can veer from what we planned to do – that is fine.
Chris: No problem at all.
NCBAC: Generally, how are you and your wife doing as leaders in this field?
Chris: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with relying on our faith. That is where we come from in our household and that is what we try and project in our business.
My wife Carol has always been a significant part of mentoring me on the business, but she works full time as a banker as a branch manager.
We had plans in place late last year to do a major renovation of our home which certainly has shifted our lives - we’ve got that going on. I’m speaking from my home office in a small apartment while our house is torn up inside being redone but we are doing fine! We’re blessed. We’re healthy. We both are working and getting paid so that’s a good thing. We’re getting through it OK.
Carol has an old friend from grammar school who passed away recently. That’s the closest we’ve come to it personally. Otherwise, all the family is fine. Carol’s father is 92 and he lives in an assisted living facility and cannot have visitors of course. Now, we’ve got that too and yet were doing ok. His spirits are still up, and we talk with him frequently via video call so although it is not the same as a visit it is still a more personal way of interacting.
NCBAC: Is there any special message that you can share that you realized of late that you needed to give your caregivers?
Chris: Yes, a couple of things come to mind. There are two channels of communication that we have been consistent with since our world changed with COVID. The first channel - the culture - builds on something that we have already, because I think if you don’t have the supportive culture in place, any communication that is specific to COVID or dealing with any special circumstance is much harder because it may not come across as authentic.
We tell them consistently that we are here for them. If there is something that they need - if its money, childcare other personal or family matters – we encourage them to ask for help. We gently remind them, if you do not ask, we cannot help. As I mentioned, we consider ourselves faith based, but of course we do not discriminate or require that our employees be Christian, but many of them know we are coming from that perspective and they know they are in our prayers. We remind them that we are blessed to have them in our presence. The second channel is about education, reminding our staff to keep yourself, your family and our clients safe using social distancing, hygiene, PPE and many other safety protocols that we know can make a difference. Early on, we have been making sure supplies are available for them and our clients and that our caregivers are exposed to specific training regarding COVID.
We use Care Academy right now for online training. They have some specific Covid related training which is particularly good and normally they have just so many seats where they can train people, but CareAcademy opened the COVID training to unlimited training seats. We have 50 caregivers and we used to have to move our people in and out of training depending on the number of seats they had available. But they are allowing us to give the training to all the caregivers at one time.
We have also educated our people as to what rights they are entitled to because of what is known as the Cares Act. We have communicated to them the information about this legislation that provides them with family leave or for paid sick leave if its related to COVID. The Act allows us to be paid back through tax credits.
Our caregivers are aware, in addition, that if it is not COVID related, they should still feel comfortable coming to us to ask for help. We are here for you if there is anything you need, we will help. I’m sending texts to them in that regard.
We are seeing that some home care owners have felt the need to stay in constant contact. I prefer to have less frequent, yet regular communications because we do not want to create fear or overwhelm them with constant communications, instead, we spoon feed the messaging. That way the information does not cause information overload. What we are doing is contacting regularly and it is creating a good habit. We want to continue doing this and be more disciplined about it going forward. Consistent positive messaging should be for culture building and education, it is a good blend.
We also have connections with our local cooperative of 6 owners and we have the support of the franchisors and of course the Home Care Association of America. We are getting a lot of intel on a multitude of issues.
We really have not had any issues. Our current clients feel that our market is safe, but we have lost some clients who would rather take care of their loved ones in the home and avoid visits from caregivers at this time. So we have lost some clients, but we are still doing ok.
I remind our caregivers that we have the backing of the government loans which we just received. I assure them not to worry because if we are losing some clients the wonderful thing is that we can still pay them. There is a financial component to all of this, and we want to help our caregivers thru this as best we can and at the same time be a steward of the business.
NCBAC: It is wonderful to hear that you are talking about a faith-based organization that gives people a sense that you care for them (employees) and that in turn means that they are very prepared to care for their clients. Is there a special message for caretakers of Alzheimer patients?
Chris: Yes, and the answer is likely near and dear to you as an educator and that is that there is a real difficulty explaining to those who suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia what is happening. It is a rather complicated thing. A typical question is “Why aren’t we going to the store?” Our caregivers tell us this is a common question being asked of them. To explain why we can’t take them out of the house is a challenge and it can be hard to maneuver. We are working on ways to keep our dementia clients from becoming too anxious or depressed.
NCBAC: As we rely even more heavily on a skill set called ‘communication’. Not only the technology associated with communication like Zoom for example but emails etc. are critical. What do you recommend that we do?
Chris: Well, as I said recruiting is much harder. However, caregivers who have been consistently working are staying involved. So, the ones that are current are fine but the people who have been waiting in the pool are not taking jobs. That is a challenge and one thing we are doing is interviewing using zoom, Facetime for Facebook Messenger.
NCBAC: Can you share some stories about your caregivers as heroes and heroines? Can you offer a shout out to people on your caregiving team?
Chris: Great question. I consider every one of them heroes…. They’ve already been told, but they are hearing me say it more and more as they are venturing out to help the most vulnerable in our society.
Some of our caregivers are in even more challenging situations. For example, we do provide help to a long-term facility. We help with shifts during the week. These people are true heroes who work in this memory care wing where we have 12 clients.
The long-term facility has had some trouble staffing but have not had any COVID incidents yet. In this situation, they are much more vulnerable since the patients are closer together. We have three people going in there. Mary is one of them - a rare caregiver. Anything that we ask of her she does. Mary can do back to back shifts - whatever it might be. She and two other people are helping in very risky situations and exhibit a very high level of heroism. (Since the interview, this facility has now reported 1 employee tested positive for COVID and 3 residents on the floor we work on as positive COVID. Yet. Our caregivers are still willing to go work there!)
We do not; hear the phrase “I’m leaving” very much but I do not blame them especially if they have children. We must understand their concerns and be respectful.
NCBAC: Do you think that this pandemic might show us the caregivers’ great value?
Chris: Yes, and the good news is that the Care legislation finally includes them in the medical category!
NCBAC: How can NCBAC help and what can we do specifically to reach out to them?
Chris: You do have contact through the training files - correct? If they are asking for specific information from you it would be good to share and support them and contact them personally.
Carol was talking recently about how frequently we our connecting with family and we realized that we are connecting more in person on the phone because we are used to going to see them. Now, we have to phone/text and maybe NCBAC could use this method to stay in touch with your certified caregivers/educators.
NCBAC: That’s a great idea and I promise after this call is over, I will start to make the calls.
Chris, we are at the end of our time and I hope to connect with you in a month or so to see how you are doing. Give our best to especially to Carol and your team!
Chris: Thank you. Looking forward to staying in touch as well. It was very nice spending time with you, Ellen. And, keep up the good work!