Toni McNett became a caregiver as a kid back home in Greensboro, Pa., even if she didn’t necessarily realize it at the time.
It’s just that her beloved grandmother needed help with day-to-day tasks, due to her emphysema and chronic back pain, and young Toni was always more than willing to help.
She’d fetch the TV remote or a cup of coffee.
Without asking, the attentive granddaughter would fluff a favorite pillow or maybe prop open a window on a stuffy day.
“I loved helping her,” McNett said.
“I wanted to do what I could.”
McNett would grow up to become a nurse, before transitioning into a new role as executive director of the Morgantown office of Village Caregiving.
Village Caregiving is Mountain State-founded company that offers in-home care for elderly clients across West Virginia and some 20 other states, from Maryland to North Dakota.
“Keep your heart at home,” is the motto and mantra of the operation based in Barboursville.
That’s also the shared hometown of its three founders, Andrew Maass, Jeff Stevens and Matt Walker – whose friendship goes back to their days at St. Joseph Central Catholic High School in Huntington.
All three came from close families.
The trio also had the shared experience of watching cherished family members languish under spotty palliative care, while laboring to live out their final years at home and away from the hospital or other care facility.
In good health or no.
Like McNett, Stevens’ grandmother railed against the illness that eventually killed her.
“My grandmother had leukemia,” Stevens said, which meant lot of trips for chemotherapy sessions and the hair salon.
“She lived with us,” he said.
“And we had great in-home care, but it wasn’t always consistent. You’d get people calling off.”
Here to help
While his company isn’t set up to offer traditional medical care, he said, it does prescribe to the quality-of-life version.
Companionship, routine housework, hygiene and basic transportation are just some of the help Village Caregiving can provide with its vetted people going out to homes and families.
And there are a lot of homes and families in those straits across the country these days.
Currently, more than 60 million Americans – according to numbers from the National Caregiving Alliance and other sources – are providing in-home care for their loved ones who need assistance related to all the above.
Oftentimes, he said, it’s a dive into the deep end: A sudden, debilitating stroke, for example.
In countless cases, though, the co-founder observes, it’s a cognitive, slow-motion decline, delivered by dementia, which is more common than not, among the elderly.
“By the time you realize that, you’re really in,” Stevens said.
“And it’s just part of our culture that we want to respect the people we love,” he continued.
“We want them to have their dignity. That’s why it’s such an important call, if you do pick up the phone and call us.”
At the Morgantown Village Caregiving office at 3420 University Avenue, Suite 101, the number is 681-285-2555 – which answers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Visit www.villagecaregiving.com for more particulars on the operation.
Meet the family
Stevens said he appreciates the main particular in that the workers who go out to homes often become like family – with invitations extended to weddings, birthday parties and other milestone events.
McNett seconds that.
“We’re here because of them,” she said.
The Morgantown office’s fifth anniversary coincides with Friday’s National Caregivers Day observance.
That’s why the doors will be open from noon-6 p.m. that day for caregivers, clients and families to drop by, the Morgantown executive director said.
Food, refreshments and merchandise giveaways will be part of the day, as well.
“Of course, we’re gonna have swag,” McNett said, chuckling.
Character beats the coronavirus
Stevens, meanwhile, likes to note two other things in abundance at the Morgantown office, he said.
Tenacity and vision.
“We opened in Morgantown in February 2020,” he said.
“We all know what happened in March 2020. Everybody there said, ‘Well, people are going to need us more than ever now.’”
