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Success Story
Home Is Where Loving Hands Are FoundCare-givers allow elderly to stay where they've lived. Kathy Stelluto has been there. The owner of Loving Hands Home Care & Companion Care, Youngstown, knows from experience what her clients go through. In the early 1990s, Stelluto needed care-givers to look after her mother who had suffered a series of small strokes. "My mother didn't need a nurse at $20 an hour," she recalls. "That was quite expensive just to have somebody sit with her. You couldn't really leave her alone because she did need a little help up to go to the bathroom, fix meals, things like that."Back then Stelluto ran a company that served samples of foods in supermarkets. She and her sister used newspaper want ads to hire care-givers."We had some wonderful ones. We had some terrible ones. We had one that stole her wedding ring, which we could never prove," she says. "Our family went through what typical families go through."As more of her friends found themselves in need of help caring for their elderly parents, they approached Stelluto for advice on how to pick care-givers, and she found herself helping to evaluate them. Before long, she was spending more time on evaluations than running her business. Sensing a demand for care-giver services, Stelluto launched Loving Hands, opening the home-based business 12 years ago.Stelluto began by hiring retirees, many of whom worked in area nursing homes. "A lot of the people would prefer to work one-on-one in somebody's home. They get much more gratification out of that." Most of Stelluto's employees range in age from 50 to 75 although a couple of women are in their 40s. "We try to make sure their children are old enough so they can be left at home by themselves if they're sick because a lot of our patients have absolutely nobody -- there's no family, there's nobody," she explains. "And if our person isn't there to get them out of bed, they're going to lay there in their dirty diaper all day and not have food." Having experienced "the good, the bad and the ugly" in hiring care-givers for her mother, Stelluto describes herself as "picky" about whom she hires. She strives to limit her staff to 40 care-givers operating out of the Youngstown office. "Almost every person that works for me I've been to their homes. I've met their families, their children," she remarks.Staff turnover, she says, is minimal and a majority of her staff has been with her from the start. Care-givers will work with a given client anywhere from a few hours a week to living with them, and Stelluto has a sliding rate scale to keep costs affordable. Her company provides home care short-term and long-term and has provided services to one family since 1999.Loving Hands serves a wide range of clients, including amputees, victims of strokes and heart attacks, people suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease, and people in hospice care. She expects care-givers to furnish the same levels of skill and care they would want a member of their family to receive. In addition to being trained in how to help clients with transfers -- helping them get up and down from wheelchairs, chairs, beds and such -- employees are expected to have basic housekeeping skills and to clean and cook. Often, they also will help with physical therapy, helping the client exercise on the days the physical therapist isn't scheduled. They can empty catheter bags, and some can perform tube feedings. They also help their clients keep appointments (the doctor, bridge club, hair dresser) and run errands, such as shopping for groceries -- "everything it takes to keep that person at home," Stelluto says. "We always have a meeting with the family so that they know the expectations. 'This is what we expect you to do while you're here taking care of Mom,' " Stelluto explains. "Some people say, 'No, we don't want you to do anything, just sit with Mom. That lasts for a while. The next thing you know they're running the house. They do that because they're sitting there when Mom's taking a nap -- what are they going to do? So they don't sit and read a book. They prefer to go clean the bathroom." In many cases, the care-givers are a source of much-needed companionship. "We find a lot of the elderly people don't want to eat. And that becomes a problem because they lose their strength," she says. "A lot of it's just depression and loneliness."Loving Hands care-givers encourage people to interact -- for example, getting them to help prepare dinner, or making cookies during the holidays. "The whole attitude just changes and they look forward to that companionship," she says. Families are also encouraged to come over at least once a week for a dinner the care-giver prepares, which allows "quality time" for parent and son or daughter.Stelluto remembers fondly her mother's care-giver inviting her family over for dinner, creating time to relax and enjoy her mother's company. "With my mother I got to the point where I was almost resentful, and I thought, 'What a terrible way to feel about your elderly parents.' Instead it turned completely around and Mom and I could just sit and talk, and I never had time for that before because I was trying to do everything," she recalls. Sometimes, a relationship develops such that the care-giver becomes part of the client's family, and vice versa. Stelluto tells how one client, a retired physician, took his care-giver with him on a cruise. The care-giver's spouse -- who on Sundays used to come over to watch football with the doctor -- told his wife to go on the trip.A care-giver sometimes helps move a client into a nursing home when needs advance to that stage, or helps the family set affairs in order at the house when the parent dies, going through the house, cleaning and packing. Stelluto's company opened a second office in 2003 to meet demand in Trumbull County. The Howland office is run by office manager Sandy Magliocca, a friend of 20 years. Magliocca, who has a nutrition degree and is studying nursing, had experiences similar to Stelluto's after her father suffered a stroke. While she is involved in the hiring of employees based in Howland, Stelluto says she leaves the day-to-day management of the office to Magliocca. "There's such a call for it over here," says Magliocca, who has a dozen care-givers working out of her office. Increased competition has been the major change Stelluto has seen. Where once there were only one or two other companies providing similar services, today her competition include national franchises and local entrepreneurs.Loving Hands remains more than a job, she offers, and she appreciates it when she hears from a client family tell her they wouldn't know what they would do without their care-giver. "I know the feeling," she says. "