Helping Friends and Neighbors: DeeDee Strout's Story

DeeDee Strout has been working in home care for six years. DeeDee is no stranger to hard work, having spent years running a hay farm with her husband and son as well as holding down various jobs. Sensible and straightforward, it is perhaps her quiet demeanor and self-determination that allows her to see that a sense of usefulness and independence is essential for her clients to maintain their dignity. In her job as a caregiver her goal is to "help not hinder" people, which she takes very seriously. She also holds a membership with Maine Personal Assistance Services Association (PASA), which she sees as an opportunity to make her voice heard by those at the legislative level. This voice, she feels, is vital for others to know about the challenges that both the clients and workers face, and overcome, every day.

The Decision to Care

Through my whole life it seems that I was always helping somebody: my grandmothers, my grandfather, my cousins. One of my earliest memories is of my grandparents’ landlady. She had one leg removed, so she was just sitting all the time in one chair. My grandfather went down and he took her chair, put a platform under it, put some casters on it, then brought it back upstairs to her and said, "Here, have a wheelchair so you can move around a little bit." She loved it. That was back before any Medicare or Medicaid came into play. I remember going downstairs to help her every time I was over to my grandparents because she was a neighbor and a friend, and that’s just what you do with your neighbors.

When I ended up later in life as a displaced worker from a shoe shop and found myself at a local job fair speaking with a woman representing the agency I work for now, I wondered if personal care work was something I could do. I remembered the feelings I had when I helped others so I decided to give being a PCA a try. After working three years, I found myself feeling burnt out. After too many weekends and nights, I decided to give it up. Eventually, one of my clients called me and said "When’re you coming back, DeeDee? When’re you coming back?" Over and over, I told them I wasn’t coming back. They would say, "Well, we need you." I talked to them off and on for about a month, and it was nice to know they cared. Finally, I called the company and asked to go back to work. They were thrilled to hear from me. Despite the fact that my clients had been assigned to new PCA’s already, my company called each of them and I was able to be reassigned to them, allowing me to start with a full load of clients again.

Helping our Friends and Neighbors

It always is strange when you first walk in to someone's home because you're the one who will be washing their face or their back, or giving them a total shower. You don't expect to be doing that with someone you've been friends with for a long time, but it feels natural for me to be helping out the people I know, and even the ones I don’t know. I know that if I'm helping, I'm making his or her life that much easier. Of course I'd do that for my friends.

Around my fourth week into this job, my agency called and asked me if I wanted to take on a new gentleman. The minute they told me his name, I thought, "Oh my goodness, I used to work with him in the shoe shop. If he wants me to come, I’ll come." He was really surprised that I was in this field of work after all these years. So I went, and we had a nice chitchat reminiscing old shoe shop stories. Along the way there have been quite a few clients that I already knew before I started taking care of them. Many times, people would much rather have someone they know than someone they don't know. If they know the person that's coming in, they're more trusting. Although the workers are supposed to be trustworthy when they are hired for this job, sometimes you just don’t know.

Respect and Caring

I've been in the business now for a total of six years. I think what's most important to me is that I care about the people- about how they are feeling. I usually spend my first day with a client just getting acquainted. Instead of walking in and taking over, I sit down with them for five or ten minutes. I tell them who I am so that they'll know that I'm from the company. I always wear my badge for the first day, and sometimes the second and third times, but I don't wear it steady. Some people are kind of nervous when someone is in there wearing a badge.

Some people go right in and try to take over the whole house. Many of them, like us, have things that they are very possessive of, and they want them kept right there beside their chair. They don't want it in the kitchen where it really belongs, even if that makes more sense to me. I don't treat my clients like I can do things better than them. If they want to do something for themselves, I stand there and I let them do it. When I first started, I found out that I was hindering them more than I was helping them because I was doing everything for them. Even though I thought I was helping, I discovered that I was taking their mobility and their sense of pride away from them.

I don't want to make them complacent. I want them to feel like they're involved in their care and they're involved in their housework, so I'll leave some of the dusting for them to do. They're excited because they really don't feel like doing those things when they're alone, but when we do them together, it's nice. We chat and laugh and before they know it, we're done. I believe that if you're going to be in a person's home, you've got to take time to talk to them and enjoy their company. More often than not, you can learn things that you wouldn't believe, if you just take the time to listen.

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

I heard about Maine Personal Assistance Services Association (Maine PASA) through my company. In PASA I learned that I am a direct care worker and I liked the idea that they wanted to make the State understand how important home care and direct care workers are. It's important for people to understand just how important this job is, and how much money we're saving the State by keeping people at home and out of nursing homes.

It's important for people to see the circumstances that some of these individuals live in. Many of these folks, unlike those in a nursing home, are not set up with handicapped accessories because of cost and accessibility. I'd like people to see how much trouble it is for my two clients in wheelchairs to get out of one chair and into another, or to get in or out of bed without the right equipment to help.

What do you say to someone who tells you, "I've been trying for three years to get in to see this doctor, but Medicare won't pay for me to go there," or when they talk about the problems with physical therapy services being terminated before they feel ready. Eventually, when they get discouraged enough because they feel no one's listening or caring, they'll stop doing their exercises. It's because they've lost hope. So, when I go in, even though I'm very busy I'll say, "Okay, we have this physical therapy and it's very important, so let's get up and go do it." And usually they will. I'm not getting paid to be a physical therapist and I'm not really trained, but I do it anyway.

Maybe if a legislator was to come and actually see how we work, they would realize how important we are to the people. We could tell them that the reason there are not enough of us is because we don't have insurance, we don't get paid sick days, we don't have vacation pay and we don't have good money coming in. We all work hard, and we all do extra work for our clients and it's not because we're getting paid to do it. It's because we care about the people; because they are our friends and neighbors. I'm sure if a representative would understand that, they would know that direct care workers are indeed a very vital part of our society and we should have more of them. Then they would work harder to support us.