Senior Care Is Really the Stress Reduction Business with Ron Braun and Sandy Bauer of CarePatrol KCMO — Full Episode Transcript

Families will come in thinking, well, especially the ones that, you know, they know this is the right thing to do. But none of us came into this world thinking that this is what we're gonna do for our folks, right? So everybody thinks we're gonna be healthy and strong, we get to live at home forever, or I can take care of my folks, or I can take care of my husband or my wife.

I had an adult child say one time, there's no way you're going to be able to care for my mom like I can. And the sales director said, we're never gonna be able to love on her like you — you're her child. You're gonna be able to love her more. We're not gonna try to. But from a caring standpoint, you're only one person. We've got a whole team here that can help her. We will be able to care for her, with fresh people 24/7 who can care for her all the time.

When caregiving feels overwhelming and the system feels impossible to navigate, this is your guide. Here, you'll learn ways to navigate long-term care planning, find real support for caregiving, and prepare you for the road ahead. I'm your host Lindsay Friedman, and now you're not in this alone. Let's get started.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of LT CareNav's Care Compass. I'm your host, Lindsay Friedman, and we are here today with Ron Braun and Sandy Bauer of CarePatrol of KCMO. So we are super excited to have them here. And as always — Ron, Sandy, we always start with: tell us what you do, and then individually who you are and why you do it.

We are CarePatrol of KCMO. We're a senior advisor group who specializes in helping seniors navigate through the overwhelmingness of trying to find senior living — whether that's independent living, assisted living, memory care, even if they just want to stay at home with home health or hospice. Our goal is just to provide resources to families. Our services are completely free, no charge to the family. In all candidness, we do get paid by our contracts with communities, but our goal is just to provide education and resources and help seniors through this crazy world.

So a little bit about me. I got into this business through multiple ways of helping seniors, whether that was through military claims, helping seniors with their claims, but ultimately ending up being a sales and marketing director with senior living, assisted living and memory care. I also got my administrator license in assisted living, so I still have that active license at a small community here in the Northland. But I came into CarePatrol and it was just a blessing. I mean, I just love helping seniors. I got my degree in elementary education and thought that was the way to go, but really truly it wasn't. I wanted to be on the other side. Seniors just have such beautiful, wonderful stories. And so often in this world we find seniors just kind of get forgotten about. You know, our world is so busy, and yes, we love our parents, we love our grandparents and we want the best for them. But sometimes we're just too busy, or we just don't have the time, or we just don't know. There are so many resources out there and people just don't know about them. And so they're lost and they have no idea where to go, and they end up putting their family members in places that — let's face it, there are places out there where the TV shows really depict not a pretty picture. And when there's an emergency or when we're out of time, that's sometimes where families go, and it breaks my heart because they get forgotten about or they don't get the right care.

And so being in a position like this is just truly a blessing because we get to help so many people find that right place that meets their needs and helps them to have that better quality of life. We also get to help the families become family members again — those people who are caregivers, and we see the caregiver burnout, and they end up being frustrated and angry. Just being allowed to give them back that 'I just want to be your son or daughter, I just want to have those memories with you' is so rewarding. So that's a little bit about me.

Well, I started with CarePatrol — my wife and I bought the franchise in 2019, so a little over seven years now. I think we were drawn to CarePatrol via my mom, because my mom had dementia. She went into the hospital one time for a pain with her heart, but that was fine — the problem was she couldn't remember where she lived. And so my brother-in-law, my brother and I drove all over Saskatchewan looking for a place for her with nothing more than a stack of papers and a couple of locations to try to find something. And so when this opportunity came up a few years later, having that empathy and helping people get through that same kind of situation was what drew me to CarePatrol.

My role here is — Sandy does most of the business development, trying to find new contracts, new clients and new referral resources. But I like working with the families. Sitting down with them, there are so many different stories that they have. And as Sandy said, helping families get back to being a son or daughter, not having to worry about being a caregiver, helping people find the best place for them — and ultimately a lot of times going above and beyond and making sure that they get what they need, because a lot of them don't have a lot of extra resources around to help them. We can usually find the resources that will help get them where they need to be.

No, I love that. And your story is really typical, right? The family that is taking care of mom, and then there's an emergency, and all of a sudden you're told you need something different, and you're driving around freaking out about what to do. So when families come to you, what is the first thing you sit down with them and do? Are they already frazzled, and what's the first step?

It varies. We get the rare breed that are long-term planning and they're thinking, well, we might need something in two years, so maybe we should sit down and look at something now — which is great. Every time I do a presentation, I'm always saying, if you take one thing away from this, it's a lot better to plan than to react. But sometimes life gets in the way of that. So a lot of people come to us and they are pretty frazzled. They've been told mom's in rehab, that she can't go home, and they've just received notification that she needs a new place. So they're freaking out — 'I've only got a week to find a place.' And we'll say, a week? We've got plenty of time. That's lots of time for us.

So we help calm them down. I think a lot of what we do is — we're in the stress reduction business. We help people just relax. We've got this. Any job you ever do, if you do it once, it can be difficult. If you've done it hundreds of times, it becomes a lot easier. When we first sit down with them, we just try to remove some of that stress, get them to relax a little bit and say, hey, we got this. We'll find a place for you. We will get the right place. And we'll even have a few smiles while we're doing it — there's a lot of truth to the idiom that laughter is the best medicine. We joke around with people, but take it seriously and help them find the best place for them and their loved ones.

I love that you said it's the stress reduction business, because I do think this is one of the most stressful things that any family can go through — the transition and also the caregiving piece of it. So you keep saying mom or dad — are your primary clients usually the adult children seeking help? Or do you ever find a senior who's like, I just need to do this, I need to take the burden off my kid?

We do both. We work a lot with the adult children, but there are some seniors looking for assistance as well. And sometimes the seniors reach out because they don't have adult children. Those are the ones where I keep telling myself I'm never going this deep again in helping somebody, knowing full well that I will. When somebody doesn't have resources to help them, we either help them or we find other people in the community who can help them get where they need to be.

We had a client one time who was moving back to be closer to her family in Wisconsin. So I drove her halfway to Wisconsin and met the family halfway. It was loaded up — it was like the Beverly Hillbillies driving down the road, which was a show back in the sixties. We had Spotify on, playing 1950s music all the way, singing away, and we met the family about halfway to Wisconsin, moved everything over to their car, and we were on our way.

They were pretty happy. The only downside was that when we came back, my daughter helped me clean out her apartment, and we found out we forgot her husband — because he was in an urn in the back of the closet. So I learned how to ship an urn after that too. Fun fact for everybody: you can't do it by UPS, it has to be through the post office.

I've found so many people from CarePatrol go above and beyond in that exact way. You're not just placing and going — you are literally becoming the hand that is holding them through the whole journey. This might be the most extreme story I've heard of that, but what a wonderful gift you gave that family. Sandy, you've been in the space, you've worked in assisted living. When you see families come in, what is their biggest concern about that transition, and how do you work with the family to understand that it's going to be okay?

It's hard. A lot of families come in knowing this is the right thing to do, but none of us came into this world thinking this is what we're gonna do for our folks. Everybody thinks we're gonna be healthy and strong, we get to live at home forever, or I can take care of my folks, or I can take care of my husband or my wife. When they come in, the things they're looking for — obviously they want to make sure care is priority. They want to make sure the place is clean, that it feels like home, that it's gonna make their loved one feel as close to home as possible. So really it's just giving them that comfort level.

One of the things that I fell in love with is that hand-holding. Ron goes on every single tour with those families — that warm connection, that warm handoff. We're not giving their information out to a whole bunch of people and saying, okay, now you call and find this out for yourself. He really walks each person step by step, and that creates those relationships with families and helps alleviate some of that anxiety. Because they are anxious, they're scared — you're getting ready to leave your loved one in the hands of people you've never met, and trust that they're going to take care of them the way you would. By having that relationship with Ron or myself, it's that warm handoff. We go through the tours with them. And that's what families are looking for — just that peace of mind.

Trying to get families to understand that usually that first two weeks are the hardest — being honest, open and candid and transparent is the absolute best thing you can do. We don't want to lie to anybody. We don't want to give them a falsehood that everything's gonna be great — it may not. Your loved one may fall again in the first two weeks, and maybe that's why you're bringing them to a community, because they fall a lot. You can't stop somebody from falling; that's just a part of life. But the staff are going to do their very best to protect them and love on them, and having that 24-hour oversight, maybe we can potentially stop a fall or ease that fall so they don't get hurt as badly.

But just explaining to families that the first two weeks are gonna be the hardest — that's usually when you're gonna get all those phone calls: I don't like it here, come get me, they're holding me prisoner. We hear that a lot. So that encouragement — and also encouraging the family to be involved. Now you get to be that son or daughter, that husband or wife, and not the caregiver. It's okay not to feel guilty. You can go home, you can sleep, and then come back and enjoy a meal with that person, or come do an activity with them, so you can create bonds and relationships with the staff and the community. Even encourage them — if you'd like, you can spend the night and see how things go. For some families that works really well; for some it's not a good idea. But just helping them understand this is a good place.

For Ron and I, because we both — Ron with his experience with his mom, and we've both been in this for so long, and we've had our own family situations — I think that helps, because we can come alongside families with a true understanding of what caregiving looks like. It's not just lip service. We truly understand the caregiver burnout, the burdens these families are going through. Even just sharing personal stories with them helps them have that trust level, and it goes a long way.

Something that not many people have touched on that I would love to chat about is the first two weeks being the hardest. I have a friend who used CarePatrol Cleveland to place his mom very recently into memory care. And he asked me, what do we tell her? And during these first weeks, what do I say when she's having a really hard time adjusting? Interestingly, the assisted living is not really helping walk the family through the right thing to say. So what would you say to people who don't have the right thing to say?

A lot of it does depend on the situation and the person or the family. Did that loved one come from rehab or a hospital stay into memory care? Are they coming straight from home? Because sometimes that's gonna change the answer.

I never, ever — I always encourage families to never ever use a time frame. It's amazing, families will say, well, she's not gonna remember anyways, so if I just tell her you're gonna stay here for 30 days and then we'll see if you're okay to come back home, she won't remember that I said that, and so it'll be okay. No, absolutely not. It's not okay. It's amazing how the brain works. Even though short-term memory is the first to go, they will hold on to that. So really you're setting them up for a huge lie — number one, you've broken that trust, and in 30 days they're gonna be hounding you saying, okay, it's time to come home.

So I always encourage them, don't ever use dates or times. Sometimes it's really helpful just to explain to the person, this is somewhere we can come to get some additional help — being truthful with them in a way they're able to understand. Mom, I love you, and I want you to have the best care possible, and unfortunately I just can't provide that for you at home right now. So we're going to have these folks take care of you and help me provide you a better quality of life. If they're coming from rehab, sometimes you do have to use some verbiage — this is gonna help you get a little bit better, you've been working so hard in rehab, and now we're gonna come here and they're gonna continue to help you get strong. But again, true, honest answers — just not providing so much information that you're gonna set yourself up for failure in the end.

I have to add to that. A lot of people will always say — and this helps both the caregiver and the resident — I had an adult child say one time, there's no way you're going to be able to care for my mom like I can. And the sales director at that time said, well, I might differ a little bit. He said, we're never gonna be able to love on her like you — you're her child, you're gonna be able to love her more, and we're not gonna try to do that. But from a caring standpoint, you're only one person. We've got a whole team here that can help her. We'll be able to care for her and help her a lot by being there, fresh people 24/7 who can care for her all the time. And then when you come in, your only job is to be providing the love and not the care.

That really resonated with that family — helping the resident know she was going there because it was getting to be more care than her daughter could provide, but also it was good for the daughter, because she realized, okay, you're right, I can't replicate myself that much. That reduces my job to more just being the loving rather than the caregiver all the time. As Sandy says, it really will vary by the individual, how you communicate that and what they need to hear.

I also think some of the issues when we think about going to a home — we're thinking in our heads about these scary nursing homes of the 1960s, these sanitariums. And then most people come in and see the assisted livings and they realize how beautiful they are. Do you see families have these aha moments of, wait a second, mom, this does not look so bad? You're gonna get your house cleaned, and food, and waiters at every meal?

Yeah, we get the children going, how do I sign up for this? This looks awesome. I call those FUD tours. We don't have enough acronyms, so I thought I would create another one. FUD to me is fear, uncertainty, and doubt — so they're FUD removal tours. Even when people are a long ways out — I'm doing some next week — the guy said, I don't want to move for a couple of years, but I want to get that picture of the nursing home out of my head. So when we start thinking about the timeline, he's been around and he's been to several communities and sees how much fun they're having there and how nice they actually are, so it's not so scary. You get the fear out, it's not so uncertain. So I call those FUD removal tours. A lot of times they happen very early in the process, just to help seniors and families get on board with the whole idea.

One of the things I love — part of what Ron does through that discovery time with the families and the client is learning, okay, what is important to you? Are activities important to you? Do you really love to play bingo three times a week? Is food important to you? Is a religious service important? Ron and I are both certified in aligned care, which is knowing the eight dimensions of wellbeing and caregiving, so we really hone in on that.

A lot of these communities are so open and generous to allowing those clients to come have a meal with us, come play that bingo game with us. In learning that about them through discovery, we can help them find the communities that are truly going to provide exactly what they're looking for. And then we can encourage them — you know what, they're having a great happy hour this Thursday and your mom loves music and cocktails and food, so why don't we go have a happy hour together so you can see as a family how fun it actually is to live here? Or if church is important — they have church service every Tuesday and Sunday morning, why don't you go and enjoy that with them? It really truly is a great way. We've got great relationships with the communities, but it's so important getting that information and knowing our people so that we genuinely can give them an environment that is going to provide that quality of life.

All of these things really come down to finding a local advisor. Families who are out there searching and listening and saying, well, I'm gonna go look at that local community — I would highly recommend everyone find their local CarePatrol, their local advisor. Because even the big things — like if you need a ride from Kansas City to Milwaukee, Ron's your guy, right?

Well, that's not advertised too much. It's not something I want to do a lot of — especially at the price of gas now. But it is something where you get involved, and like I said, every time I do it I say I'm not gonna do it again, always knowing that I'm going to. I just lie to myself.

Well, now people see what you're willing to do. And that's why — don't just Google and allow somebody who's gonna answer a phone in a city far, far away from yours. There are so many cool, intricate details you need to know about this process. So how about we leave everyone with final words and where to find you? And remember, Ron's not an Uber — but obviously he goes above and beyond.

Sometimes I feel like an Uber too. To find us, we're carepatrol.com/KCMO for our website. You can always phone me — as long as I'm still awake, I'm available for answering calls, because questions come at all kinds of times. Sometimes it's nice just to get an answer. Call or text me; my cell phone is never very far from me. That's 816-535-9966.

Final thoughts — one of the things we do: it's better to plan than to react. I have a lot of different sayings, and that's one of the main ones. Another one: I've never seen anybody move too soon. I've seen a lot of people wait too long. And we've got a family now in a situation where, unfortunately, they waited too long, and they're really putting themselves in a corner as far as what to do.

And the final one — I quote the movie The Shawshank Redemption. There's a line that says, get busy living or get busy dying. I don't really say that to clients, but it's more like the existing-but-not-living families out there. There are a lot of people sitting there just watching TV — they get up, watch TV, have breakfast, watch TV, have lunch. They're not getting out; they don't want to be a bother to their family. But there's so much quality of life they could have if they have the opportunity. Just see what the options are. Our job is really to help people understand their options. It doesn't cost anything to talk to us, and we like to talk. So have us come in and we'll talk, you make sure you understand your options, and enjoy some of that quality of life. There's a lot of it yet to be had, and we'd love to help people do that.

Really, it's what Ron said too. There are so many great communities, and I just encourage — if your loved one is still very active, getting out, playing golf, going to church, doing things in the community, that's great. But if your loved one is really starting to pull back, losing their friends, starting to stay at home and not be so active — really truly, don't wait. Give us a call. Let us show you the resources that are out there and available. Let's give them back that wonderful life they can have.

Like Ron said, we've got people on waiting lists for years, but they're acting early enough that they know, and they get to choose where they want to go. If you're really concerned that mom or dad or a husband or wife may not like it there, well then let them come look at it themselves now, while they can decide and make that choice, and do it together. But really truly, just giving people the quality of life is what we're all about, and just helping people to navigate. We love what we do. And I definitely think you should go local so that we can have that relationship.

I totally agree. I second that one. So thank you both for joining us today. And thanks everyone for listening — we will be back next week.

Alright, that's a wrap for today. Until next time, remember, you're not alone. Take things one step at a time, stay centered, and trust your calmness. See you next time on LT CareNav's Care Compass.