↑ Grab this Headline Animator

They Want to be Angels

February 4, 2005 -- As new medications and hospital procedures extend the average American life span, sons and daughters are faced with tough decisions about how to provide late-life care for their parents.



"The elderly is the fastest growing segment of the American population, with two out of every five Americans now over the age of 65," said entrepreneur Robin Donnelly. "At the same time, working families have less time to spend caring for their aging parents, which has created a real crisis in America," she said. Robin and her husband, Jeff, Rome Beauty Drive residents, aim to do something about the problem by opening a homecare business in Amherst that caters to the needs of senior citizens caught between self-reliability and nursing home care. "My goal is to prevent seniors from going into the nursing home if at all possible," Robin told the News-Times. "I've seen a lot of people who didn't need to be in a nursing home - they just

needed a little bit of assistance."



The Donnellys' solution: Open a Lorain County business called Visiting Angels, on Kresge Drive, which allows seniors to live at home with the help of some well-trained heavenly helpers. "We do serve as angels, helping with basic chores, personal hygiene, meal preparation, shopping, companionship, and providing a respite for family care-givers," said Robin. Visiting Angels is a nationwide enterprise with more than 200 franchises, and the Donnellys said that after discussing launching a restaurant first, they decided they wanted to enter a more socially-minded field.



That suited Robin, a nurse of nine years, and Jeff, a 23-year veteran air traffic controller who said he wished he could have had a visiting angel after he nearly lost his leg in a motorcycle crash two years ago. "We have a lot of love for the seniors, and this is something we genuinely want to do," he said. "They feel like they are alone and have no place to call their own." Though Visiting Angels is a non-medical practice, the Donnellys said one of their hopes is to prevent seniors from sliding into an irreversible descent into depression that can also affect their physical health. Patients, Jeff said, often start to see a decline in their health after being placed in a nursing facility because they are forced to give up their homes, possessions, independence, and driving privileges. Sometimes the shock induced by the change can send aging patients into a regression toward childhood behavior that alters their personality. Hopefully, said the Donnellys, having a visiting angel who will listen, talk, play games, and provide household assistance will help stabilize clients and keep them vibrant and energetic.



Their service also caters to recovering patients, mothers recovering from pregnancy, younger shut-ins, and adults with mental retardation. Right now, they plan to employ as many as 30 caregivers and four office workers. They will run the franchise operation themselves, and said there is plenty of room for the enterprise to expand in the future.



For more information, call 440-282-4333 or log on to

www.visitingangels.com.

September 15, 2004

Amherst News-Times

They want to be angels

Donnellys open home care center on Kresge Drive

by Jason Hawk

News-Times reporter

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

---

This article has been robotically scanned and tagged by Prnewsnow with the following search tags. No human manipulation of these tags take place.
| School | School Diploma | north atlantic regional |

---

4891 readers online...

, Local News