Part of the world again

Most of us don’t think about how our dayto-day activities connect us to the world around us—how one day we could actually miss going to the grocery store or just having an ordinary conversation about the weather. Kaliahna Tripp of Happy at Home shares how important just a few hours a week with an in-home caregiver can be to a senior.

Kaliahna was first exposed to the field of caregiving in San Luis Obispo. She worked in an assisted living center and discovered that senior care was her calling. Kaliahna smiles and shares, “It sounds so corny to say, but I just really love old people. It was like a whole new population in my life that I’d never had, and I just loved it; I loved them, loved their stories, and their history. I just had so much fun with it.”

Originally, her plan was to open her own senior facility. However, while attending college, she began working for an in-home care company because their flexible hours allowed her time to study and attend class. This move from a large center to more personalized care shifted her focus. “That was actually where the lightbulb went off because people were so much happier at home. It was amazing to me how just a couple of hours a week could make such a huge difference in someone’s life.”

Following her graduation from Chico State, her parents offered to help fund her concept of a care-giving company. “It’s been cool to create something that just started with an idea. My parents and I sat on the patio at Starbucks with napkins, drawing out logo ideas and talking about what this could be.” That idea is now Happy At Home, a business that has provided jobs and care to hundreds of people and is celebrating its 10-year anniversary.

Having the experience of working both at a large facility and an in-home service, Kaliahna sees the benefits of aging in place. Happy at Home allows seniors to get personalized one-on-one care designed to meet their needs and help them maintain a sense of independence. By remaining at home, they are able to preserve a sense of familiarity with their surroundings which is extremely important in cognitive function. Happy at Home offers assistance with all activities of daily living including bathing, dressing, restroom use, and eating. They also help with homecare services like cooking, transportation, pet care, laundry, and shopping. Kaliahna says that no matter what they’re doing, they’re always providing companionship and supervision. They can visit the home for as little as two hours a week or as much as 24 hours a day. Kaliahna personally meets with every client and their family to develop an initial care plan and offer advice on what assistance and tools would be required to provide optimum care. She’s adamant about matching the right caregiver to the right client, thereby ensuring a positive experience. While her 60 employees may have different specialties, from working with stroke survivors to those with dementia, they’re all caring individuals. She says, “I like people with experience, but it’s not required. We can train anyone on anything except how to be a good person. They have to have heart.”

She shares a story from one of her earliest clients at Happy at Home named Charles. “All we did was take him shopping twice a week, two hours each shift. He liked to go to Barnes and Noble and the grocery store.” She was doing her check-in phone calls to see how everything was going and if he was happy with his caregiver. She says, “He got all choked up, and he told me, ‘I am a part of the world again’.”

Happy at Home can be reached through their website www.happyathomecares.com or by calling 530-774-2127.