Right at Home Main Line's Ted Pease Providing Peace of Mind Through Compassionate In-Home Care

Right at Home Main Line's Ted Pease Providing Peace of Mind Through Compassionate In-Home Care
 
This episode of The Good Neighbor Podcast opens the doors to Ted Pease, franchisee of Right at Home Main Line, who is not just a good neighbor business owner. In this episode, our host, Bob Blaisse welcomes this former active duty veteran and current Navy reserve officer whose mission now includes improving the lives of the elderly and adults in need of care and comfort in their own homes.

Listen to Ted Pease bring his unique perspective to the compassionate world of in-home care, emphasizing the peace of mind his Right at Home organization provides to families in the northern communities in the State of Delaware and across that state line and into Delaware County, PA (Delco), and parts of the Chester County and Montgomery County, PA suburbs of Philadelphia. Ted's dedication to service resonates through every story of assistance available to his clients, from easing the transition from hospital to home to crafting long-term care strategies that enable clients to age gracefully in the familiar surroundings of their own homes to speed recovery and support the realities of advanced old age.

This conversation goes beyond the logistics of non-medical care, delving into the heart of what makes Right at Home a cornerstone service in communities served across the United States. Listen as Bob explores with Ted the delicate balance between supporting the routines of those requiring care and the invaluable comfort trained in-home care attendants provide. For the comfort of the clients, as well as the comfort of their family members in knowing that their loved ones are being served by capable, caring hands. Ted's passion for his mission is palpable. His stories are inspiring. And the impact of Right at Home's mission is a testament to the power of service that goes well beyond good business practices, to the necessity of being a good neighbor business in the truest sense.

Website:  Right at Home Main Line
Call: 610-566-6650

--- About The Show--- Good Neighbor Podcast is a spotlight on local businesses in and around Delaware County, PA (“Delco” ) and Beyond...  The executive producer and host, Bob Blaisse, is a community sponsorship advocate, business branding specialist, and publisher of several hometown magazines, including: Newtown Square Friends & Neighbors, Marple Friends & Neighbors and Newtown Edgmont Friends & Neighbors, mailed monthly to more than 12,000 homes in Western Delaware County, PA, and also available for reading online.
 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello, delco. This is Michael Barkan, welcoming you to the Good Neighbor Podcast, where fans of local businesses and their neighbors come together. It's my pleasure once again to introduce my friend and neighbor, our host Bob Lacey.

Speaker 2 0:18

Thank you, michael Barkan, and welcome again, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. This Good Neighbor Podcast is coming to you from Southeastern Pennsylvania, delaware County, pennsylvania. We lovingly refer to Delaware County as Delco. So our podcast, good Neighbor Podcast Delco, is here to serve not only our community here in Southeastern Pennsylvania but Delco and beyond and across the nation as well. Today our guest a good neighbor business for sure is a business that's called Right at Home. Now you can imagine what that means because we're all right at home right now if you're listening in your home. But Right at Home In-Home Care and Assistance is an in-home non-medical care organization that we're very proud to have in Delaware County, focused on Delaware County, parts of Chester County and Montgomery County in the suburban Philadelphia area.

Speaker 2 1:14

Let me bring to the stage here the franchisee of Right at Home Mainline. His name is Ted Peace. Ted, welcome to the program. Hey, bob, thanks for having me. Sure, thank you, ted, and thank you for your service. Ted, I understand that you're a veteran and you hear that a lot, I guess, as a veteran. But I want to say thank you for your service to the elderly and the infirmed and people that right at home your business is able to provide services for. So let's get right into it and help me in that context, ted. Who really are your clients? Is it predominantly the elderly, or is it the infirmed? All kinds Cover the bases on that one.

Speaker 3 1:53

Yeah, thanks, Bob. So Right at Home's big motto is improving the lives of those we serve. So one of the key reasons why I wanted to buy this company was the ability to serve where I grew up, where I live, and continue that life of service from when I was doing Christian service at school all the way through military service, that I'm still actively in the reserves. So right at home our main customers are any adult who needs care. We primarily serve the elderly, but our other customers are the families who needs care. We primarily serve the elderly, but our other customers are the families. We provide peace of mind for the families who maybe the daughters, the sons, the cousins, the aunts who have been these primary caretakers and need help now. And so our primary client, of course, is the folks that we're serving. And then secondary clients are their family members, making sure that they know that they have somebody in that house that they can trust that's taking good care of their family.

Speaker 2 2:48

Well, let's talk about them one at a time. Ted, In what I've heard, you say that there are cases where people are, say, in the hospital and it's getting clear that they're going to need some help when they get home and maybe they don't have enough family members in the immediate area. When they get home, and maybe they don't have enough family members in the immediate area, an organization like yours might be contacted, or their social worker or someone their immediate family might look for an organization like yours to kind of right from day one when they come home from the hospital, to be present. Is that a typical case and to what degree is that a case versus, say, a gentleman or a couple that's elderly saying we finally have to get some help to come in here?

Speaker 3 3:30

Yeah, and it's everything in between. So we'll get calls from social workers or the case managers of hospitals and rehab saying, hey, so-and-so is coming home, they're going to need some help. We'll go out there same day or next day, depending on what fits their schedule and we'll meet with them and we'll talk with the case manager. We'll talk with the social worker and then we'll talk with them about what their true needs are. So do they just need some help getting up in the morning and making some breakfast while they get on their feet? Or is this going to be a longer term care case where this person wants to age in home? What doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to go to a facility?

Speaker 3 4:07

And now we're building out a continuum of care. What's our short-term care strategy? Look like Maybe it's more acute and we need more time there. As the clients are recovering and getting stronger, we reduce our care hours um per day, maybe in in totality, and now we're in there supporting their independence. So we try to make sure that our caregivers are in there encouraging and helping people maintain independence. They're not.

Speaker 2 4:38

That is great to hear, because really what you're saying is we're not. We're not a business that trying to sell more service hours. We're really a business that's trying to sell more service hours. We're really a business that's trying to get you recovered or more independent. Ted, tell us the service area that you serve.

Speaker 3 4:53

So our company serves all of Delaware County and then Westchester up to Plymouth, Meeting and South. So we have a pretty large territory. But throughout all five counties of Philadelphia, New Jersey and the surrounding areas there is a right at home that can, that is independently owned and operated, and all of us owners talk all the time. We help each other all the time, we send each other referrals all the time and so no matter where you may have family or loved one, if I can't directly serve you, I will do and make sure that we have a warm handoff where somebody from the other office I introduce you directly and you know that you're going to be able to have that help that you need from a one-to-one perspective.

Speaker 2 5:33

Well, thank you for that service too. We're talking with Ted Peace, who is the owner of the Right at Home In-Home Care and Assistance Organization. It's an in-home care non-medical service organization for the infirmed elderly people that just need short-term help at home in assistance in some of their daily activities or making sure that they're taking their prescribed medicines, perhaps, or doing some light house cleaning. Services is what are what make you be able to stay at home and be able to grow maybe older but do it right at home, or to be able to get back on your feet and not have to be in a rehab facility, perhaps when you could be at home. So, ted, if you could tell us how is that done through the members of your organization, describe what the profile is for a worker that comes out to a home to help one of your clients.

Speaker 3 6:30

Yeah, so we have everything from four-hour shifts a couple times a week all the way through live-in care, and we also provide 24-hour care. So we have clients who are fully bed-bound where we are just providing round-the-clock care to ensure that they have a safe and clean environment. So our caregivers range in age from 18, and we have some in their 70s that are some of our best caregivers and so they can kind of handle that mix of cases. We'll recruit some of our CNAs and more highly skilled caregivers for some of our more complex cases where we do need to make sure people know how to safely shower or we do need to do fully bed-bound care, where we're doing continence care and changing sheets and sponge bathing.

Speaker 3 7:14

And then we also have folks who maybe have a little less experience and we're working on training and so they're doing a little bit more of the companion care and the light housekeeping making sure those folks who want to maintain independence within those instrumental activities of daily living can get the help that they need. So we have a wide range of folks that we recruit from. Most of our caregivers are just absolutely dedicated. We have some that really do view this as their job in order to earn some side income. We have teachers who are doing this in the evening, and we have people who are in school who are doing this as their way to earn some income while they're doing it, and we do have full-time, dedicated caregivers as well.

Speaker 2 7:57

It's a great mission, it is a great vocation, in a way as an employment, and I would imagine, quite frankly, you could probably work not that far from home. Do you set up a profile of the individual per se and allow the client or the adult children of the client to be able to say you know, I think we'd prefer to have a male or a female, and is that okay for certain obvious reasons? Or you know, he doesn't like somebody that's talking a lot, or we really want him to be, or she to be, active. You know, if I don't talk to you, I won't talk to anybody all day. So do you kind of pick up on the personalities of both the client and then try to match it up personality-wise or gender-wise or age-wise with your service worker?

Speaker 3 8:39

We we do a really intensive conversation when we're doing our, our client intake and we go through and we try to understand what the needs are. So there's understanding what our needs are in terms of what is the true care that you need and then what are the wants. And we want to try to make sure we're matching personalities and we're matching styles Male to female. You know, if we're working with a bed-bound client or somebody that we need to help shower and toilet, of course we can match gender to help with that comfortability.

Speaker 3 9:12

When it comes to personality, not everybody's a fit, as we all know. Everybody's a fit, as we all know. So we do spend a decent amount of time making sure that in the back office we spend the time to to try to fit needs and wants to the best caregiver that we have. But sometimes we're going to make sure that you have the skilled need that you you, you are requiring, based off of care, might be a little bit higher of our priority than the want of having the most loquacious and proposed person in the world, than the ones of having the most loquacious and proposed person in the world. So you know, and it depends, we usually have a care team, so you're going to have a couple aides. So we'll try to work through having the right personality mix and the need mix as we go.

Speaker 2 9:47

That is a nice service as well. It's important, ted, because we all know those of us who have had elderly parents pass on. We know that those final years can be extended by being in familiar surroundings, and so I gather that is the underlying premise of the whole name of your business right at home to be able to age in your home and perhaps hold off. That might be an eventual destination of nursing care or some kind of assisted living in some other facility that many persons can't afford these days.

Speaker 3 10:23

Yeah. So we we you know there's tons of studies out there we're able to keep people in their house for much longer for much less money than if you're going to immediately go to a facility. And we work with the Veterans Administration. We're accredited with the VA to provide in-home care through their services. We work extensively with long-term care insurance, so we will handle the submissions of all your documentation. If you have a long-term care insurance policy, we'll make sure to handle all that and make sure your claims are submitted appropriately. And we do have private pay opportunities and we have a great network of folks that, if you're not quite sure, how do I need to pay for this? What can I do? Here we have a ton of resources. We're very knowledgeable ourselves, so there's a lot of things out there to help you pay for this type of care and we're happy to help you with that. And if we can't do it, we have some great network partners that can.

Speaker 2 11:13

That is awesome news from Ted Peace, the owner of Right at Home In-Home Care and Assistance. It's a care and assistance organization on the mainline area of Philadelphia, western side of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, delaware County, but serving both parts of Montgomery County and Chester County along the mainline of Philadelphia, and Ted is a former veteran. Ted give us just a short story about the veteran work.

Speaker 3 11:42

How many years were you in service. I was active duty for 10 years. I was driving ships for the Navy as a surface warfare officer and then for a couple of years I taught people how to drive ships and got my MBA at night and then transitioned off of active duty and now I'm still in the reserves doing that weekend warrior and twice a week overseas. So all my and now I'm still in the reserves doing that weekend warrior and twice a week overseas. So all my service together I'm about 16 years.

Speaker 2 12:07

That is a great background for this kind of service work and you're bringing together great caregivers for your clients and you are still on mission to get people further down the road, but being able to do it right at home. We want to thank you because, still on mission, you know, to get people further down the road but being able to do it right at home. We want to thank you because, right at home, the very nature of what you do as a service person to your clients and that your whole team at right at home in home care and assistance organization does, is a service organization. Want to thank you because that service certainly makes you a great good neighbor business, a good neighbor in our community. I'm going to thank you for being a very, very good neighbor business.

Speaker 2 12:47

If you'd like to reach out to Ted Peace, you can do so by just contacting him at their phone number at Right at Home, which is area code 610-566-6650. And certainly you can check them out on the web. Their website is rightathomecom but search up Newtown Square, pennsylvania or Southeast Pennsylvania or puta zip code in and you'll find the Right at Home main line, which is what Ted's franchise organization is for Southeastern Pennsylvania. Ted Peace, you are a good neighbor business right at home is a good neighbor business and we want to thank you for being in our community and serving our community of Delaware County and beyond. Thanks for being our guest today on the Good Neighbor podcast.

Speaker 3 13:30

Thanks, bob, I appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 13:32

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast hosted by Bob Lacey. This is Michael Barkan inviting everyone to get on the Good Neighbor team. Nominate your favorite local business to be featured on an upcoming episode by going to gnpdelcocom or by calling Bob at 610-557-3745.