Ribbon Cutting At The Betty Best Memorial Training Home

  • Home Instead Senior Care
The Betty Best Memorial Training Home Ribbon Cutting

The Home Instead Senior Care team held a ribbon cutting for its new Betty Best Memorial Training Home, where innovation and hands-on training are brought together to provide a unique and effective learning experience for area caregivers. 

Home Instead is proud to offer their newf hands-on learning experience to area caregivers and would welcome anyone from the area to stop by the office to see the Training Home in person. The Betty Best Memorial Training Home is located at 1440 West Walnut, Suite A6. They also have offices located in Jerseyville and Litchfield.

Pictured Back Row (l to r): Heather Cochran, Cody Walker, Becky Hatlee.
Front row (l to r): Nikki Bishop, Chamber Board Chairman Keith Bradbury, City Treasurer Ron Smiljanich, Jerry Best, Gina Hayes, Dawn Spicer, Chamber President Lisa Musch.
  • The entrance into the training center looks like a front door with mailbox and all. The facility is open to all caregivers, new and experienced caregivers who might want to hone their skills. Spicer says all the caregivers have different strengths and they use many of those strengths to help train others. One may have an amazing recipe to share, or one may have a better way to assist seniors in a task, and they all work together as an interactive team. Caregiver classes are held on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They have plans to open an additional garage facility in the future that will assist caregivers with garage hazards and more since a caregiver drives a senior’s car or may drive a client in their own cars during home care.

They will have a Business After Hours on Thursday, October 27 for Chamber members to attend and see the new training center first-hand.
  • Inside The Betty Best Memorial Training Home:  
Gina Hayes (left) explained that prior to the new training center they would explain to caregivers that seniors would be uncomfortable having someone new in their home and going through cabinets. However, through those conversations, they realized the caregivers themselves were facing their own challenges feeling comfortable inside a strange home and fixing meals with items in cabinets and on shelves they had to find. The driving purpose behind the Training Room is to give caregivers hands-on learning opportunities to prepare them to be professionals in the home care industry. The design and layout of the Training Room fully resembles a senior’s home. It features five different ‘rooms’ including a fully-functioning kitchen, a dining area, a living room area and a bedroom area. The Training Home also features five different types of flooring caregivers may face, and numerous pieces of adaptive equipment, including a hospital bed, a lift chair, a wheelchair, walkers, canes and a Hoyer lift.

The training home allows caregivers to get the feel of being in a strange home, experience trying to find items, fix a meal and look for possible hazards seniors may have in their home. This scenario training helps caregivers realize the challenges they may face in a strange home. They use real dishes, find things without assistance in the cabinets such as a crockpot, pots and pans, ingredients for spaghetti, condiments, napkins, and cooking utensils.
  • The entrance into the training center looks like a front door with mailbox and all. The facility is open to all caregivers, new and experienced caregivers who might want to hone their skills. Spicer says all the caregivers have different strengths and they use many of those strengths to help train others. One may have an amazing recipe to share, or one may have a better way to assist seniors in a task, and they all work together as an interactive team. Caregiver classes are held on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They have plans to open an additional garage facility in the future that will assist caregivers with garage hazards and more since a caregiver drives a senior’s car or may drive a client in their own cars during home care.

They will have a Business After Hours on Thursday, October 27 for Chamber members to attend and see the new training center first-hand.
  • Dawn Spicer, training coordinator, says they must also look for home hazards such as a small throw rug that a senior could trip on, cushions that aren’t pushed in all the way which might be a hazard to when seniors sit down. It could even be money or jewelry lying around that caregivers must counsel their clients to put away off surfaces. Caregivers must identify five hazards in the environment during their training.
Share This

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *