How One Home Health Agency Uses Caregiver Training to Connect with their Community

Kathy Walls, RN is a home health executive who believes in the value of family caregiver training. Walls is the CEO at Universal Health Service, a JCAHO-accredited agency in Fort Worth, Texas. Kathy spent 15 years as a home health and hospice nurse before deciding to start her own agency. Now 10 years old, Universal Health has 150 employees and provides a variety of services including home care, hospice and private duty providers.

Ms. Walls has been using the 18-hour National Caregiver Training Program to educate both family caregivers and paraprofessional home health aides. “We began to offer the National Caregiver Training Program in two public schools in the late afternoon to reach the sandwich generation, caregivers of aging parents who still have children in school,” she said.

“We have worked with caregivers of all ages in our programs. The programs have been very well received in our community. We have offered classes in our own facility and also have brought classes to churches and assisted living facilities. We also use some of the program components for private duty training,” Ms. Walls continued. “The program is wonderful for our agency’s outreach,” she said. “It provides an added value to our services, and enhances our ability to reach out into the community, so that caregivers realize that they can come to us when they have questions.”

“We are a bi-lingual agency and now we will be using the Spanish-language version of the National Caregiver Training Program as well. We will be doing outreach into the Spanish community to provide this training in Spanish for both family caregivers and home health aides. ”

“There are many intangible benefits to educating the community,” Walls stated. “We want people to think of us when they need home care or hospice services.”