By Rachel Schreiber

Mom gets older. She seems to be losing her mental facilities. She doesn’t want to leave home and the family doesn’t know where to turn. David Herman, owner and manager of Trusted Loving Care since 2004, understands this family’s dilemma. In fact, he’s lived this scenario. David, originally from Chicago came to Ann Arbor as a bathroom remodeler working with his brother-in-law. When David’s mom began showing signs of Alzheimer’s, David, an only child, began caring for her. His father has already passed away. David says, “I was intimately involved with her care so in 1995 I brought her from Chicago to Ann Arbor. I spent the next six years seeing to all the services and the care she needed. Being her caregiver changed me. I realized I wanted to work with people and seniors. I wanted to work with people in a different way that was more alive than restoring their bathrooms.”

“There’s a growing need for caregivers as the baby boomer generation gets older, and for the disabled,” says Patti Filios, Community Relations Director of Trusted Loving Care (TLC). Patti is from California and has a degree in journalism from Auburn University. She was a reporter for the Selma Times Journal and a reporter and news director a TV station in Selma, Alabama. She was also a Public Affairs Officer in the U.S. Air Force for 14 years. Patti was drawn to TLC because she says, “I wanted to do something to make a difference in people’s lives. I found David’s ad and thought; this is something I would love to do.” TLC works in conjunction with other senior industry people.” Patti explains, “We work in cooperation with the assisted living facilities. We can come in and play checkers with the patients, read to them, go through scrapbooks with them. The facility’s staff may not have the time to do that. We do. If an assisted living facility has a waiting list, we can care for that person until they can make the transition into the facility. It’s a wonderful symbiotic relationship we have with these facilities.” Patti, like David, has a personal connection with being a caregiver. She speaks about her father-in-law, “He’s 92 years old and he needed help. I demanded he get home care. Now he has two home caregivers, it’s worked out beautifully.”

David says, “Trusted Loving Care has joined an organization called Companion Connection Senior Care. Within the organization, there are hundreds of members who do what TLC does. I receive training and ongoing support from Companion Connection.”

Trusted Loving Care is always looking for experienced caregivers who have worked in home care for other companies or for their own families. David elaborates, “We’re searching for wonderful people who have had experience caring for the elderly. In addition to their experience, we are also requiring they are certified nurse assistants.

David speaks about his client-family matching process, “The caregiver is very important. We specialize in matching caregiver to the client and family. If the family doesn’t like the caregiver, we want to know yesterday. Patti states, “That rarely happens because in the initial process, we prescreen the caregiver and then we bring the client and their adult children in to the selection of the caregiver and if they think it’s a good match, and if they don’t absolutely love them, we bring someone else in. Our people are bonded and insured, are covered by workmen’s compensation; they’re honest, hard working people.”

She says, “I choose Shaklee because I wanted a flexible business that was portable and sustainable. My in-laws are in Tennessee and we (her husband Keith) want to spend more time there. I didn’t want to have a business where the products are made from someplace in the rainforest and a tree has to be cut down to grow a particular type of berry or where the sales model is built on more destruction of the planet. I feel confident of Shaklee’s commitment to providing quality green products and protecting the Earth.”

Trusted Loving Care
David Herman
Phone: 734.302.1234
Website: www.trustedlovingcare.com