Rhonda Followed Her Mother Into Senior Care
Rhonda Washington followed her mother’s lead and joined the ranks of professional senior care. Now Rhonda is helping her mother as a family caregiver and works with other seniors as a highly honored Home Instead® CAREGiver for the award-winning franchise in Birmingham and southeast Oakland, Michigan, owned by Bert and Stephanie Copple.
“Years ago,” Rhonda said, “I worked with my mother, who was a health-care worker. She used to be employed by a highly regarded care community in West Bloomfield, Michigan, that offered assisted living and independent living options for seniors and the infirm. I took care of some of her residents on the weekends.”
Rhonda added: “So, that’s how I started off in professional caregiving. Now I take care of my mother, and she is 88 years old. I assist her, and I also work at Home Instead, so that’s where I am now as a family caregiver for a senior loved one and a professional caregiver.”
Home Instead General Manager Anne Monaghan recently announced that Rhonda had been honored as the franchise’s CAREGiver of the Month for April. Focusing on Home Instead’s training, processes and procedures of successful caregiving have helped Rhonda achieve her CAREGiver of the Month status.
Rhonda pointed out: “What I like best about being a CAREGiver is that I like talking to our Home Instead clients and listening to their past history and background. I also just enjoy doing the things they like to do.”
For Rhonda, touching lives impacts her soul, whether she’s providing physical help or if she is offering emotional support in a companionship role. Rhonda said she doesn’t see any reason to change what’s she has been doing in her successful career of compassion and empathy. “I’ve been with Home Instead for a little over three years,” Rhonda said, “I would say Home Instead is definitely in my future.”
In addition to her strong companionship skills, Rhonda provides safety assurance, meal preparation, medication reminders, light housekeeping, and transportation and errands. Rhonda and other CAREGivers offer personal assistance with eating, grooming, dressing, bathing, incontinence care, dementia support, cognitive impairment, hospice support and mobility. By expertly doing so, CAREGivers not only assist their clients, but help their families eliminate worry, reduce stress and re-establish personal freedom.
Rhonda loves being a part of the CAREGiver team for the Copples’ Detroit-area franchise, a member of a highly successful network founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Paul and Lori Hogan. The Home Instead network is the world’s leading provider of in-home care services for seniors, with more than 1,200 independently owned and operated franchises that provide more than 80 million hours of care annually throughout the U.S. and 13 other countries.
Rhonda is among more than 90,000 CAREGivers worldwide, and she has helped add to those numbers because of her strong belief in Home Instead’s purpose. It isn’t hard to see Rhonda lives the Home Instead principles of “Build Trust, Take the Lead and Share Your Heart.” Rhonda also shares the strong belief in Home Instead’s purpose and core values. Those core values are: “Honor God in all we do; Treat each other with dignity and respect; Encourage growth in ourselves and others; Build value in our service to others.”
All Home Instead CAREGivers are screened, trained, bonded and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (248) 203-2273 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
