Working at Help at Home: A Passion-Driven, Meaningful Career
Tina Hutson has been in home care for about 30 years – more than 25 of that at Help at Home. For her, it’s a passion-driven career that has only become more meaningful with time.
“I always loved the aging population, which is why I first started doing it,” she said. “It’s also the hustle and bustle and multitasking that comes with these roles. I just love it. It’s fast and it’s busy.”
When Tina first became a care supervisor in Springfield, IL, it was one of Help at Home’s newer branches, with only about 100 clients. She eventually became branch manager, and during her tenure she watched the branch grow to a couple of thousand clients.
“The Springfield branch will always be close to me,” she said. “I watched it built from the bottom up.”
Now, she manages several branches in Illinois. She said that the firsthand experience she had in her previous roles helped make her better at her current job.
“I love supporting the branch managers. I love supporting the care supervisors,” she said.
Sometimes she misses being closer to the “front lines” of the work, but she also gets to stay close to it when she visits the branches “I’m not afraid if the branches are busy and I need to jump in and take a phone call,” she said. That may lead to her helping a caregiver troubleshoot a problem – or reassuring a family member that there is help for their situation.
Caregiving means problem solving
Tina always had a personal interest in the value of home care, but that intensified when her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and began to need more help. “It just made the passion even stronger than it was,” Tina said, because it reminded her of how much the whole family benefits when a loved one is getting the care they need.
“I always say that the relationships that we make and the people that we meet along the way, that makes it worthwhile,” she said. “It’s just amazing – our clients, our caregivers, your coworkers…. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding things to know the lives we touch every day.”
One thing that experience has taught her is that it’s important to understand the motivations of a client. Sometimes it’s tempting to think of a client as difficult – because they want something done a certain way or keep asking for different caregivers. But experience has shown her that there’s usually a good reason behind this – and understanding that reason is Help at Home’s job. The key is finding the caregiver that can connect with the client– reassure them and make them feel comfortable. “There really is someone out there for everybody. We have to find that perfect match for them.”
As the company grows so do the resources to support employees
Help at Home has grown tremendously since Tina began at Help at Home. One of the positive effects she noted is the support services. She remembers that in the early days, when opening a new branch, the office staff was doing everything from figuring out how to get the phone lines set up to finding furniture. Now, the company has resource teams that specialize in these things and support the branches.
She says it’s nice, for example, to be able to call someone in IT when she has a computer problem. Then she laughs. “We didn’t even have computers when I started!”
