AROUND THE PARK AGAIN by Sharon Lee Tegler
Brought to you by Jing Ying Institute of Kung Fu & Trai Chi
We first met Winsome Brown of Lean On Dee Senior Home Care Services in October of 2020 not long after she and sister Dee (Danielle) Morgan Brown opened the business. As part of a virtual event focusing on Alzheimers patient care that she’d organized for the Greater Severna Park and Arnold Chamber of Commerce called “The Long Walk”, Winsome revealed how the Brown sisters started their company.
After working in New York’s financial sector for over twenty years, Winsome was unexpectedly thrust into the role of a caregiver for her mother who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2010.
The sudden pressure to make life-altering choices on her mother’s behalf, without being prepared to do so, forever shaped her views about our health system and what was needed for seniors and caregivers.
Soon, Brown and her sister Dee, a registered nurse, formed Lean On Dee Senior Care Advocates, serving as Certified Senior Advisors and Certified Dementia Live Coaches and Caregivers. Working together, the two basically managed dementia care for Alzheimer’s patients on their own. But, as demand for Lean on Dee’s services grew, they moved quickly from being a “no-touch” service doing home visits and assessments, and referring clients to other agencies, to a full care agency.
“We were doing all the marketing and management of patient care and sometimes even managing the staff of the other agencies we’d referred families to,” Winsome said. “We soon decided we could do it much better than those agencies.”
Working together, with Winsome taking care of business and Dee using her skills as a former Hospice and Palliative Care nurse to oversee patient care, the two developed a bottoms-up approach centered solely on the Alzheimer’s patient and family rather than a revenue-based model.
In the short time since getting their state license last June, Dee and Winsome have added 30 well-trained caregivers to their staff, becoming a level 3 agency, and they’ve instituted an approach to care that considers “the patient first”.
Seated next to each other in their conference room after meeting with one of those caregivers, the sisters noted that they are meeting with so many people on a daily basis that their modest suite of offices at 815 Ritchie Highway suddenly seems crowded and an expansion may become necessary.
For now, though, they like that the words Compassion, Respect, Quality and Dedication are emblazoned on the wall of the conference room as a reminder to caregivers and clients alike that Lean on Dee is about more than simply showing up and doing the job.
“As far as we’re concerned, our caregivers have to be happy, so we hire skilled people including med techs and pay them at a higher rate than other agencies because we want to have reliable people. As we’re a level 3 agency, we can dispense medications (unlike level 1 or 2 agencies) and we do everything from personal care and companion care to skilled nursing care, ” Winsome said.
With cognitively impaired patients, medication management is vitally important.
These days, a lot of patient care provided by Lean on Dee takes place in assisted living facilities. Most of those facilities care for patients at a ratio of 15 patients to one caregiver and simply aren’t equipped to handle more seriously impaired patients.
Dee emphasizes that keeping the patients engaged is one of the most important aspects of the care she believes every client deserves.
“Many of these people are lonely, so we try to find out from their families what their occupations or interests have been in the past,” she said. “Then we send each caretaker out with a book bag of activities based on those interests so there is something to do after the patient’s physical needs are met beyond just sitting around. One patient, for example, likes to paint bird houses that are built by a different patient. We find something for everyone.”
Dee and Winsome Brown have an ideal balance of skill sets though both are capable of covering all bases if need be. Dee, for example, was the guiding force in developing a template for keeping track of how a patient is doing on a daily basis – a template that has proven invaluable for keeping families informed about their loved-one’s condition and welfare.
Winsome handles the marketing and financial aspects of the business. To that end, she’s sometimes out and about spreading the word about Lean On Dee Senior Home Care Services. She, Dee and team were seen at the Greater Severna Park & Arnold Chamber’s “Shoptoberfest” in October.
One or both sisters will be making an appearance this Saturday at the Severna Park Community Center’s Health & Wellness Expo. (See below for details.)
Both Dee and Winsome are very optimistic individuals and feel that they are truly doing “God’s work”. But they do find a few things frustrating. Because they monitor what is going on in their patient’s lives daily, they have been upset and angered by the amount of fraud directed at seniors – especially those who are ill or cognitively impaired.
They note that these vulnerable individuals are constantly bombarded with mailings, phone calls from call centers, and even television commercials with fraudulent offerings. There is tremendous Social Security and Medicare fraud, for example, including ads that urge patients to call a number to see if they are entitled to more benefits.
“They are not going to get ‘more’. It’s simply a grift to get people to buy insurance,” Winsome said. “Families need to keep an eye out for this as we’ve seen people’s savings wiped out by these schemes.”
Beyond that, these are exciting times for Lean On Dee Senior Home Care Services.
“We have the best caregivers on the planet and we feel rewarded every single day,” Dee said.
For information on Lean On Dee call 410-449-4538 or visit Senior Care Advocates | Millersville, MD | Lean on Dee Senior Care Advocates.
Health & Wellness Expo at Severna Park Community Center Saturday
A Health & Wellness Expo is being held at Severna Park Community Center this Saturday, January 14 from 10 am till 2 pm. In addition to University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center, 25 health related businesses/practices will be represented. They range from physical therapy and chiropractic services to fitness training and senior home care. There will also be 13 presenters and demonstrations running the gamut from Anne Marie Flodd from Play & Thrive Speech Therapy and Justin Livezey from Severna Park Strength Performance to Billy and Nancy Greer from Jing Ying Institute of Kung Fu & Tai Chi.
For information, visit THE SEVERNA PARK COMMUNITY CENTER – SPCC Home (spcommunitycenter.org).
The Rise and Fall of Fashion, 1750-1850 at Rising Sun Inn this Sunday at 1 pm
Rising Sun Inn, in Crownsville, will host a presentation called “The Rise and Fall of Fashion, 1750-1850 this Sunday, January 15, 2023, at 1:00 p.m., for their Tavern Talk and Tour Series. This installment will feature Heather Hook. Heather started historic reenacting in 1990. Wanting to be as authentic as possible, she ran across her first original ladies Civil War dress in an antique shop and purchased it to study. She was immediately drawn into the world of collecting originals. The Heather Hook originals collection consists of men, women and children’s clothing and accessories from the years 1750-1980.
Heather will share original women’s clothing and accessories from the decades between 1750 and 1850, showing changing styles of ladies fashions. They include decadent fashions from the 1770s with their beautiful silks, those from the risqué 1800s with the Jane Austen Grecian style “barely there” dresses, as well as staunch Victorian gowns meant to show modesty. What women wore under those gowns will be revealed as well.
For information, visit Public Events – The Rising Sun Inn Crownsville, Maryland.
The column is brought to you by Jing Ying Institute of Kung Fu and Tai Chi at 1195 Baltimore Annapolis Blvd. – For over two decades providing martial arts training that improves cardiovascular health, strength and flexibility while reducing stress. Jing Ying’s Kung Fu and Tai Chi training is an ideal way to start 2023 off on the right foot.
