Quality Over Quantity: Everlight Care Is Raising the Standard for Home Care in CA's Central Valley

What does it take to build a home care agency families can truly trust?

For Gina Kendall, owner and CEO of Everlight Care, it begins with one guiding principle:

Grow through quality, not quantity.

In this Care Across America interview with Valerie VanBooven, RN, BSN, Gina shares how more than 25 years of experience in senior care led her to create a locally owned home care agency focused on compassionate service, caregiver excellence, and meaningful accountability.

Everlight Care’s approach includes:

• Hiring caregivers with the heart to serve
• Providing hands-on, in-house training
• Offering ongoing education in dementia, Parkinson’s, Lewy body dementia, and other complex care needs
• Conducting regular client and caregiver check-ins
• Using real-time documentation to help ensure attentive, consistent care

Everlight Care has also earned repeated recognition through independent client and caregiver surveys, including top rankings in California and national recognition for the overall care experience.

For families in Fresno and Bakersfield, that recognition reflects something even more important: a commitment to providing the kind of care Gina would want for her own family.

Watch the interview and read the full article to learn more about Everlight Care’s story and its dedication to quality home care in California’s Central Valley.

EverlightCare.com

Fresno: (559) 353-2847
Bakersfield: (661) 489-5188

#HomeCare #SeniorCare #Caregiving #AgingInPlace #Fresno #Bakersfield #CentralValley #CareAcrossAmerica

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Transcript

Meet Everlight Care

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, my name is Gina Kendall. I'm the owner and CEO of Everlight Care. We have two locations in California. Our main location is in Fresno. We also have an office, a branch in Bakersfield. We've been doing this for the past eight years, and I just look forward to continuing to grow. We like to grow in quality, not in quantity, and that's where we're at right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Awesome. And you guys have done a lot of growth in the last eight years, and we're happy to have been along for that ride a little bit. Let's

From Discharge Planning To Ownership

SPEAKER_00 0:35

rewind a little bit from the very beginning. What got you into home care? What made you want to own a home care agency and get that started?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yeah, so over 25 years ago, I was a social services director in skilled nursing facilities, large skilled nursing facilities. And I did a lot of discharge planning, of course, of our residents. And when it was time to discharge, home care at that time really wasn't a regulated thing, at least in California. And so when I was doing my discharge planning of someone who went home that really couldn't be completely independent, and maybe their children were not able to care for them at home because they had families of their own, they had children of their own. And so I had very limited options for my residents when they were to go home. When it was time to go home, the facility said we've got to get them somewhere. So I ended up doing a lot of discharges to small six-bed assisted livings. But had I had the option for regulated in-home care, that would have been a great thing. So fast forward to eight years ago, and my background in senior care and also adults with developmental disabilities, it just seemed like a natural thing to go towards. And I was just really happy to be able to start something on my own that I was able to get licensed and it's regulated by licensing and that we could do things our way to make sure that our clients are taken care of, that I hire the best caregivers, that we vet them and train them the way that I would want someone to be trained for my family member. And so that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

And your longevity in this business, even before you own a home care agency, that all of that speaks volumes to the quality of care you guys provide. Because having talked to many home care agency owners over the years, if you don't provide that quality care, if you don't have a good business mind, if you're not really in this for a heartfelt reason, then it doesn't really work well. So having succeeded all these years and having grown, that speaks volumes to all of you, all your team members and everyone who's participated in that. So that's awesome. Let's

Awards Backed By Client Surveys

SPEAKER_00 2:50

talk about awards because you get a very nice award almost every year. And so tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, so that's the Activated Insights Award, and basically it's based on third-party surveys, not within our agency, but separate surveys that that come out for our clients and our caregivers. And it's based on the success of our surveys, rated from one to ten, bottom to top, and we always rate really well. And right now, we with our last year survey, we're number one in California agency. And that to me says a lot because there are a lot of franchises out there. Not that there's anything wrong with franchises, but we are a smaller family-owned local agency to the Central Valley. So when I see our name as number one in California, there are a lot of agencies in California. So I'm really proud of that. And it's a way for our clients to know that we really care about our clients and providing the best, most personalized service for them. And also it lets our potential caregivers know that they're coming to work for a great company who cares about their clients and cares about their employees. And so I'm really proud of that. We're up there nationwide too. I think there's like 88,000 care agencies nationally, and I think we're like 19. So I'm really proud of that as well. I always am looking forward to seeing what the benchmarks look like and how the rankings go. So we're really proud of that.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

And that, you know what, you guys do this almost every year. You're way up there. Number one is totally awesome. And that's a out of, is that out of a hundred agencies that were surveyed? I can't remember. You're, I think it's top 100 or I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

We are top 100. Yeah, aside from that particular ranking, it's we're the top 100 leader in experience. We get high awards for our caregivers and client experience as well. So five or six, but I'm always proud of the California ranking because that's what we serve. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Absolutely. And you're right. This is a super competitive market you're in. And there are hundreds and hundreds of home care agencies across California. And for you to get number one, that is fabulous. That is really nice. And the fact that you do this year after year pretty much is really super great. So congratulations on all that. And

The Heart Test For Caregivers

SPEAKER_00 5:19

let's talk about because so I think some of the things that set you apart are family-owned and operated, you're local, you live there, you go your kids go to school there, you're you have been in the Fresno and Bakersfield areas for a very long time, if not a lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

I'm not sure, but it feels like it sometimes, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

So you guys are local and yeah, you're not a franchise. I think having all of these years of success as a family-owned business, you just couldn't ask for a better setup for a home care agency. So talk to us a little bit about what you look for in caregivers when you're hiring, because you wouldn't have all of the success without the caregivers. They are a very almost the most important part of this whole equation.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

True. That's true. And when you're running a home care agency, there are a lot of different things going on at the same time. But hiring caregivers is, of course, number one. If you don't have great caregivers, you're not going to be able to serve your clients. So I think the number one thing for me is you need to have someone that has the heart to do it. They have to love working with our population. I equate it to how would you care for your loved one? How would you care for your mother or father or your husband or wife or someone that you are a caregiver for? And so I look for that immediately, the heart of someone who wants to come and work for Everlight Care. That's number one. If you don't have that, if it's just a punch-in, punch out, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for someone who's invested in caring for our clients in the most personal way, and someone that our clients feel are like an extended part of their family almost. And we have interviewed some clients who say exactly that. So that's number one what we look for. And then

Training For Dementia And Mobility

SPEAKER_01 7:13

we then proceed to do all of the vetting and all of the training in-house. We do all of our training in-house. We do uh hands-on in-house, we have them demonstrate what they've learned and we have ongoing training throughout the year. It doesn't just stop with their orientation.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

That's great. That in-house training, not every home care agency takes that on. That's another whole set of business development of things that you have to do. But that is a great way for the folks that manage the caregivers to know that they're really sending someone out there in the field that has the right experience, whether it's Hoyer lifts or how to turn somebody in the bed and taking good care of these caregivers. I know you do. And that is a part of this whole equation, taking care of the clients, but also taking care of those caregivers.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Absolutely. And all every one of my caregivers is trained on all of the equipment. They all know how to use a Hoyer lift, they all know all that. But in addition to that, dementia training, Parkinson's training, Bluey Body, all the different diagnoses that come along with our seniors and their needs, they're trained on all of it.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

That's excellent. There's so many variations and all these long-term disease processes that we experience and having the knowledge to be able to take care of a Parkinson's patient the right way is so important. Yeah, dementia of any kind.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

So

Accountability Through Live Documentation

SPEAKER_01 8:37

we do regular check-ins with our clients and our caregivers to make sure our caregivers are providing quality care. But our clients are happy. We make sure that they're happy when we have our caregivers document regularly every 30 minutes during the day, and for knock shift every 15 minutes. Why? Because I know that they're awake. And that doesn't mean that they at 555 do all of their documentation. In the platform that we use, I can see in live time when someone's documenting. So that's how we keep people accountable, and that means that our clients are getting the care that we promised them.