Care Copilot : Helping Caregivers Manage

Summary

"Care Copilot: Helping Caregivers Manage" features an insightful conversation with Elise Dunn, founder and CEO of Care Copilot. Francine Crawford interviews Elise, exploring how Care Copilot supports caregivers managing the administrative burden of caring for aging loved ones. From finding Medicaid-approved nursing homes to securing government grants, Care Copilot eases the stress of navigating elder care. Elise shares personal stories and explains the company's mission to provide affordable, direct service to families across the country.

Highlights

• Francine Crawford interviews Elise Dunn, founder of Care Copilot, about how her company assists caregivers. 🗣️
• Care Copilot takes on administrative tasks, freeing caregivers to spend more quality time with loved ones. ⏳💑
• Elise shares her personal journey which inspired her to start Care Copilot. 🚀💡
• The service includes helping families locate financial assistance and elder care facilities. 🏢🕵️‍♂️
• Care Copilot offers unbiased recommendations for elder care communities, focusing solely on client needs. 🔍✅
• Affordable pricing begins at $50 monthly, ensuring more families can access the support they need. 💸🤗
• Post-care follow-up is personalized based on each family's preference, providing continuous support. 📞💌

Key Takeaways

• Care Copilot simplifies elder care management by handling administrative tasks like finding nursing homes and legal assistance. 🏡📋
• The service helps families identify grants and financial support for caregiving, making elder care more affordable. 💰✨
• Care Copilot offers personalized assistance without biases or financial influence from elder care facilities. 🤝🎯
• The company's approach is rooted in personal experience, aiming to be a guiding hand for those new to caregiving. 🧭❤️
• Affordability is key, with services beginning at just $50 a month, making help accessible to many families. 💵🌟

Overview

Care Copilot emerges as a beacon of support for caregivers, as highlighted in Francine Crawford's interview with the founder, Elise Dunn. With firsthand experience caring for her parents, Elise created Care Copilot to alleviate the daunting administrative challenges caregivers face. The service is designed to handle everything outside of direct care, such as finding appropriate elder care facilities and securing necessary legal documents.

Financial navigation is another critical component of Care Copilot's offerings. Elise explains how the service helps families access grants and state support to reduce the financial burden on caregivers. Care Copilot's unbiased approach ensures that families receive recommendations tailored to their needs, devoid of external influences from care facilities or agencies.

Elise emphasizes affordability and accessibility, with services starting at just $50 a month. Care Copilot is dedicated to spreading awareness of available support, aiming to reach caregivers nationwide. Whether it's identifying suitable living arrangements or assisting with paperwork, Care Copilot is committed to making the caregiving journey smoother and more focused on loving care.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Guest Welcome The chapter 'Introduction and Guest Welcome' begins with music before the host Francine Crawford introduces herself and welcomes the audience to the show. The special guest for the episode is Elise Dunn, founder and CEO of Care Co-pilot. The host expresses her happiness at having Elise on the show, and Elise reciprocates, expressing her gratitude for being interviewed. The introduction sets the stage for the interview with Elise Dunn, highlighting her role and the focus of the discussion.
• 00:30 - 01:00: About Elise Dunn and Care Copilot The chapter discusses Elise Dunn, the founder and CEO of Care Copilot. She started the company three years ago after her personal experience of caring for her aging parents for eight years alongside her sister. This experience significantly impacted her and inspired her to create the company.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Services Provided by Care Copilot In this chapter titled 'Services Provided by Care Copilot', the founder talks about their mission to alleviate the stress involved in caregiving. They describe Care Copilot as a caregiving concierge service specifically designed to assist people who are responsible for taking care of adult loved ones. The chapter introduces the concept and the motivation behind creating such a service, emphasizing the innovative approach and various crucial services that Care Copilot offers to relieve caregivers of some of their burdens.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Assistance with Grants and Funding The chapter discusses 'Care Co-Pilot,' a service designed to assist caregivers with administrative tasks. It emphasizes the struggles caregivers face, particularly when caring for an ailing spouse or an aging parent. Care Co-Pilot helps by finding Medicaid-approved nursing homes, locating in-home care aides for night shifts, and identifying suitable elder care attorneys to procure powers of attorney, streamlining the caregiving process.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Living Arrangements and Independence The chapter discusses how caregivers can benefit from assistance with administrative tasks. Often, caregivers are bogged down by the need to handle tasks such as sending emails, making calls, and filling out forms, which limits their ability to spend quality time with their loved ones. The support provided in streamlining these tasks helps caregivers focus more on direct care and maintain stronger connections with those they care for.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Special Use Cases and Personalized Assistance The chapter discusses special use cases of services and personalized assistance particularly in the realm of acquiring grants for caregiving. It highlights the availability of both private and government grants that can assist in financing care for aging individuals. The chapter specifically mentions a New York City-based nonprofit, 'Caring Kind,' which provides small grants to caregivers. Additionally, it mentions 'Hilarity for Charity,' a nationwide nonprofit offering support.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Origins and Learning Process Behind Care Copilot The chapter titled 'Origins and Learning Process Behind Care Copilot' discusses the financial aspects and support systems for in-home care. The text highlights the value of grants that provide free in-home care, which can otherwise be costly. Additionally, it notes that depending on the state and specific criteria, the state may pay individuals to care for their aging relatives. The chapter also mentions collaboration efforts in New York City to enhance these offerings.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Challenges and Support System This chapter discusses the financial challenges faced by families dealing with medical conditions and the support systems available to assist them. Specifically, it highlights the compensation available to families with members who have Alzheimer's. The speaker elaborates on the process of engaging with families to understand their specific needs and financial situations, to determine potential compensations or resources they might qualify for. The speaker expresses a wish that such support had been available when they were dealing with a similar situation.
• 11:00 - 13:30: Follow-ups and Client Relationships The chapter discusses the challenges of determining living arrangements for aging loved ones, focusing on assisted living decisions. It highlights the complexities faced by caregivers in making these decisions and explores how support can be provided to ease the process.
• 13:30 - 15:00: Conclusion and Farewell The chapter 'Conclusion and Farewell' discusses the factors involved in choosing a suitable nursing home for loved ones who need a certain level of care. It highlights the importance of selecting communities that are clean, safe, and provide proper care. The chapter also addresses the financial decisions families face, as some communities can be costly, charging up to five thousand dollars a month. It notes that some facilities accept Medicaid, and emphasizes personalized assistance provided to families to help them assess their income levels and navigate the financial aspects of elder care.

Care Copilot : Helping Caregivers Manage Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hello everyone welcome to my show ormus here I am your host Francine Crawford and today we have a special guest her name is Miss Elise Dunn and she is the founder and CEO of care co-pilot and we're so happy to have her welcome to the show thanks for having me I'm so glad that you took the time to to be interviewed um I've never heard of care
• 00:30 - 01:00 co-pilot so I'm really interested to hear hear more about more about it but first tell me a little bit about yourself yeah absolutely so as you mentioned I am the founder and CEO of care co-pilot which I started about three years ago after my sister and I took care of both of our aging parents one right after the other for a total of8 years before they both passed away and naturally that left a pretty lasting impression on me and so I made it my
• 01:00 - 01:30 mission to create a company that could take some of the stress out of that experience for other people so that's a little bit about me okay okay so K co-pilot um tell me how that works it's a great name it's a great name thank you so much I did go through quite a few different iterations on the name before I landed on that one so in short K co-pilot is a caregiving coner service so for anyone who is taking care of an adult adult loved one like an
• 01:30 - 02:00 ailing spouse or an aging parent care co-pilot takes on all of the administrative challenges for the caregiver so care co-pilot goes and finds a Medicaid approved nursing home near them or finds a inhome care Aid who can work nights or helps them find the right Elder Care attorney who can help them get a power attorney everything
• 02:00 - 02:30 that's not direct handson care of the loved one is within our purview which helps the caregiver you know immensely because it allows them to spend more time with their loved one and less time sending emails making calls filling out forms and all of that other administrative work wow that's that's great because a lot of people don't even know you know where to go how to start the process you know so yeah
• 02:30 - 03:00 that's great I I also understand that you somehow help them to get either grants for different things how does that work yeah absolutely so a lot of people don't know that there are certain private grants government grants that can help with the financing of the care of an aging loved one so here in New York City there's a nonprofit called caring kind that does provide small grants to caregivers there is another nonprofit a nationwide nonprofit called hilarity for charity and they don't
• 03:00 - 03:30 provide a cash Grant but they do provide a grant in the form of um free of charge in home care and as you probably know in home care can get pretty pricey pretty quickly um so that grants really value adding as well and then depending on the state that you live in uh if you meet certain criteria then the state might actually pay you to take care of your aging loved one and here in New York City uh we have worked with Ames to get
• 03:30 - 04:00 that compensation and it's a sizable amount uh several families that we've worked with are getting over a grand a month okay okay so you actually do the footwork for that you you do all that yep yep exactly so we speak with families to identify what their needs are what their income level is what they might qualify for to see what might be out there for them oh wow well that's great I wish I had that when my mom had Alzheimer's
• 04:00 - 04:30 me too yeah but okay that's that's awesome now I you also help with one of the one of the things that is is um a little difficult sometimes is living arrangements and making that decision and and finding independent living and things like that how do you help with that yeah absolutely so that's one of the most common challenges that we help the caregivers of Aging loved ones with you know that decision of is it time for an assisted living Comm Community do
• 04:30 - 05:00 they need the level of care that a nursing home can provide and you know which communities are clean and safe and really take care of their loved ones there is often also a big uh decision to make in terms of how a family will pay for the care some of these Senior Communities charge upwards of five grand a month every month but some accept Medicaid and so again we work with families one-on-one to identify what they're income level is if they are
• 05:00 - 05:30 going to be moving their loved one to a private pay senior community versus a Medicaid senior community and then we have a short list of some of the most highly rated communities near them at different price points the ones that take Medicaid or not and we work with families to match them with the best community and one other note is that care co-pilot is uh care co-pilot services are paid for Direct by the
• 05:30 - 06:00 family starting at 50 bucks a month so we don't get paid by certain communities to make certain recommendations there's no sort of quidd proquo Arrangements there we recommend resources for families based on what they actually need and not who's going to pay care co-pilot and that's something that's pretty unique especially when it comes to finding a senior community because a lot of placement agencies get paid by the community which can create some bias but
• 06:00 - 06:30 that bias is never there for care co-pilot okay so you're you're you're totally concentrating on what they need and you don't have a quota or something that you have to meet with certain agencies or companies and things like that so yeah exactly nothing like that okay okay so and the fee starts at $50 yep 50 bucks a month okay okay that's awesome all right what other services do you do you deliver what other the things
• 06:30 - 07:00 yeah absolutely so I'll give you a specific use case of a woman who we recently worked with who W was taking care of her father um her father suffered from a traumatic brain injury and this family happened to be Korean and so they needed Korean speaking in home care aids physical therapists occupational therapists speech language Pathologists they were also trying to
• 07:00 - 07:30 get him into a traumatic brain injury uh study like clinical trial and so they had a lot of different little things that they needed to provide the best care possible um for their dad it was two sisters that were working together and Care co-pilot found all of that and more for them we found the clinical trial we found the Korean speaking pts OTS slps You Name It We got it for them so regardless of what a family you know might need help with at the time
• 07:30 - 08:00 we do the leg work with making the calls sending the emails and filling out the forms for them to say families that time okay that's awesome so when how did you go about like learning all this like I know that you went through some things when you you and your sister were taking care of your mom and your dad um but there's so much more that it seems that you offer so what did what did you do did you take classes did you how did you figure out all these different avenues that we have to help people who are caring for loved ones yeah you
• 08:00 - 08:30 know it came about pretty organically after my parents passed away a lot of people in my network were coming to me with their own stories of taking care of their own parents or spouses you name it and it made me realize that every situation is very unique and yet the similarity is that everyone needs a little bit of a guide to go through that process with and bounce ideas off of and the thing is you know the stuff isn't
• 08:30 - 09:00 necessarily rocket science but it's the type of Life situation where you don't even know what questions to ask you don't know what you don't know yes and so for example a lot of people don't realize that you can't just take over your loved ones finances when they start showing dementia unless you have that durable power of attorney um or other legal paperwork the name of it varies by state and that's something that you know you don't really even think to ask you just oh Mom's getting confused I'm just
• 09:00 - 09:30 going to take over this bank account like no it unfortunately doesn't work that way so so yeah it really came about from my own experience and speaking with other people and realizing that people just need a a knowledgeable guide who can educate them on what needs to be done and actually help them execute on it one thing that I always like to clarify is that care co-pilot is not fluffy coaching you know we actually fill out the forms for people make the
• 09:30 - 10:00 calls for people and that guidance plus that execution is really really powerful do you have any difficulty in um getting the information and giving the information because if you're filling out the forms like some people um agencies and things like that will not allow you to speak for the person so is how does that work yep absolutely so there are some things that we just can't do because of that so for example we can't necessarily get on the phone and
• 10:00 - 10:30 speak with someone's doctor on a patient's behalf because we're not the power of attorney and those are hippo violations and whatnot but one thing that we can do is for example help a family member fill out these long applications that are needed to move their loved one into an assisted living community and so for example sometimes we work with someone who has you know reams of papers with all of the information that's needed to fill out those forms Ms like health history and
• 10:30 - 11:00 address history and this and that but some of these forms to move someone into assisted living community can be 20 or 30 pages long and so that's where we come in where we help them sort and organize all of that and actually start filling out those 20 pages okay okay um is there anything that um you because your your organization is um relatively new so is there anything that you need more
• 11:00 - 11:30 assistance in that you can get thanks so much for the company or anything like that yeah yeah thanks so much for asking so yeah care co-pilot is about three years old now so still a relatively young company and whenever anyone asks that I always have the same answer is that I will never turn down help that allows me to help other people so you know the biggest uh the biggest sort of thing that care co-pilot is always focused on is how can we tell more
• 11:30 - 12:00 families that help us out there uh that help is available and so uh anything that anyone can do to help us spread the word and let us help more people uh is something that we're always interested in so you know if anyone listening out there has a cousin a coworker an auntie who's taking care of someone who could use some help you know the help is here and the help is Affordable and it would be our honor to help more families spend less time on admin in more time enjoying
• 12:00 - 12:30 their loved one okay how do you um do you do follow-ups follow-ups in terms of um after families are no longer with care co-pilot or yeah yeah so we have worked with a few families where the loved one has you know since passed away and we do check in with them uh after the loved one has passed away so you know there's effectively no more that K co-pilot can do uh we send holiday cards do check-in calls check in texts the follow-up
• 12:30 - 13:00 really varies depending on the case you know when some people's time as a caregiver comes to the end some of them just for their own healing process kind of need to wash their hands of the whole process and step away from it and for those cases we absolutely respect their privacy and do limited followup and some people feel like it's very healing very cathartic to still hear from care co-pilot and have us check in on them and see how they're doing uh especially after a loved one has passed away
• 13:00 - 13:30 because there can be a lot of feelings of confusion and guilt and did I do everything that I was supposed to be doing so so yes there is followup which varies uh Case by case okay okay well thank you so much this is this is great and very very rewarding work that you're doing is there anything else that you would like to tell the audience or say about care coal um just that if you're out there and you're taking care of someone help is here uh and again it's aord starting at just 50 bucks a month and Care
• 13:30 - 14:00 co-pilot is helping families Nationwide uh we're headquartered here in New York City but we helped families as far west as San Francisco and if anyone would like more information about care Coop pilot they can check us out on our website at care Coop pilot. okay all right that is awesome thank you so much I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me on autus here and just giving some insight and um congratulations to to this company it it
• 14:00 - 14:30 sounds great uh and I know that that is very it's definitely needed because I know that when you're talking I'm like I needed these services so I know that there are other people that need these Services would have really appreciate these services so thank you so much for what you're doing for the caring um the caregivers Community I appreciate that absolutely thanks so much for having me today okay all right take care all right bye bye I
• 14:30 - 15:00 [Music]