For Challenging Situations, Office Staff Turns to Arlet
More often than not, the challenging client situations find their way to Arlet Doggett, the 2023 Care Professional of the Year at Home Instead® of Philadelphia, where she also was honored as Care Pro of the Month in July 2022. Arlet, who has spent nearly 10 years with the Home Instead franchise, faced a difficult family caregiving situation as a teenager.
When Arlet was 15, she began making annual summer trips to Virginia, where her grandmother lived. Arlet served as one of her grandmother’s family caregivers and gained valuable experience for what has turned out to be an award-winning professional senior-care career.
“My grandmother had dementia, lost her sense of reality and eventually stopped talking,” said Arlet, referring to her grandmother’s primary progressive aphasia, a nervous system syndrome that affected her ability to communicate. Those with primary progressive aphasia have trouble expressing their thoughts and understanding or finding words. Symptoms begin gradually, often before age 65, and worsen over time.
So, it was no shock for Arlet when she later encountered patients or clients who struggled with aphasia or exhibited the behavioral challenges of dementia, including those involving Alzheimer’s disease. “I’ve been doing this kind of work for more than 31 years,” Arlet said.
When Arlet was asked if she recalls her teenage days in Virginia with her grandmother when she assists clients, Arlet said, “The way for me to answer that is this: I treat my clients the same way I’d treat my mom or any other family member. I can’t help but get attached to my clients. That happens when you regularly provide care for someone. They are like your own parents. When you take care of people, they trust you. It is a personal thing. I enjoy working with seniors.”
It is clear that Arlet epitomizes Home Instead’s longtime motto, “To us, it’s personal.” She also embodies Home Instead’s guiding principles of “Build Trust, Take the Lead and Share Your Heart.” She is someone who is exceptional at her work with any client.
Last year, a client’s dementia was challenging at the start of Arlet’s time with her, and it got worse. Arlet recalled: “She was accepting of my assistance at the beginning. Since she was relatively mobile, I took her outside every other day when I first started with her. Then she didn’t recognize me and asked who I was, and she seldom was social. She was repetitive with her questions and sometimes had trouble forming sentences.”
Arlet added: “Then I lost her as a client when others made care decisions. I am not sure where she is now, but hers was a dementia behavior at its worst. It touches my heart because everyone deserves someone who cares about them.” In 2022, Arlet was sad to lose another client who was moved to a facility by her family. “We got along fine. She was a good-spirited person but not so good with other Care Pros. Unfortunately, that happens.”
In 2023, Arlet drew the assignment to care for a 94-year-old bedfast client who was lucid and sweet-spirited, but who faced major medical challenges. Arlet was part of a care plan for the client that also included a hospice nurse and another registered nurse. Those two nurses were scheduled to visit each day, but Arlet had to call them on occasion to remind them to come. “I advocated for her,” Arlet said.
Arlet pointed out: “Her mind was good, but her body was failing. There was a limit to what we as Care Pros could do for her because we are not allowed to give medical treatments. As I cared for her, I prayed to God to get through the day. I wanted to make her as comfortable as I could. A lot of people shied away from taking care of her. In the end, it was another Care Pro and myself besides the nurses. There was no one else to take care of her, so she was in my heart. I could not leave her. She was my client for eight or nine months, and she wanted me to be with her 24/7, but I can’t do that for any client. She was in her own apartment for 40 years and did not want to leave. As time went on, she gave up, stopped eating and passed away.”
An experienced Care Pro with a huge reservoir of compassion and empathy, Arlet had these general caregiving observations:
- “I always do my job to the best of my ability, and it’s my job to take care of you if you need help. It’s not always pretty, but the goals are safety and comfort.”
- “I treat every client like they were my family.”
- “Some clients don’t want you to fuss over them. You have to be able to read people.”
- “One client likes her own space. If you push her to talk, she pushes back. I let her take the lead with conversation.”
- “Simple touch is important. I don’t do it all the time. For one client, just my touch on her hand when I say, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ is very meaningful.”
- “Sometimes clients are hard of hearing. I make sure I am in front of one client when I am talking to her so she can read my lips.”
- “For meals, I give options so they still feel a semblance of control and independence. That’s also just a matter of common courtesy.”
- “Companionship cannot be overstated. One day, a client wanted attention from her family, who all live a distance away. Out of the blue, she said, ‘Call my children and tell them I want to die.’ I called them. So, it turns out she had one bad day and no one knows why. When the next day came, she was fine. She was over it.”
Arlet carries the burden of support for her clients, and she said she truly appreciates the support that her Home Instead office provides for her. “I’ve had a lot of jobs, but I’ve never had an office staff like this one. They give me so much respect. They put us Care Pros first. They are the best. It would be hard to find an office staff like this one. They have so much compassion. They are good people,” Arlet said.
All Home Instead Care Professionals are screened, trained and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (215) 925-4610 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
