Joyce Bonded Quickly With Client
The 96-year-old Home Instead® client was sad because Care Professional of the Month Joyce Clarke’s shift was about to end. The client, who has 24/7 care from Home Instead, gazed longingly at Joyce and said: “Are you staying with me? You make me feel good.” Joyce’s heart beat rapidly from the emotion of the moment as she replied, “I’ll be back.” It was a sign that their bonding had come quickly. Days after Joyce had joined the Home Instead team, one of the other Care Pros privately told Joyce, “She likes you.”
Joyce provided her insight: “The clients look into your face and figure out right away if you want to be there helping them. They know if you do or do not. I feel like a family member when I am in the client’s home.” Joyce added, “If you don’t love this job, you should find something else to do. I am not here for the money. It doesn’t work that way for me. Fulfillment is the payoff.”
Joyce’s compassion and empathy are big reasons for her strong relationship with her client. So are Joyce’s dishes and baked goods ... and foot baths and bed baths.
The client’s son noticed that delicious food would many times appear at his mother’s home during Joyce’s shift. The son asked, “Is this your food, Joyce?” After Joyce’s nodded, the son said, “Joyce, that’s great!” Joyce elaborated: “One reason I cook and bake at home is so that I can bring some of it to my client.” A Jamaican native, Joyce said, “I make Jamaican food. Whatever I bake or cook, she likes.”
Joyce’s shifts are mostly overnight, but she’s involved with bed baths sometimes. Joyce also washes her client’s feet from time to time. “Her daughter gives me a basin. I also rub her feet down with lotion. That makes her happy, but I’ve got to say she is happy most of the time. She is a sharp lady. I could sit and talk with her all the time, but she needs the sleep. She does sleep well,” Joyce said.
Before joining her client’s care team, Joyce had assisted another client. “I lost her so I work the overnight hours with my current client. My former client could still take care of herself. When I arrived, she was ready to go shopping, and she’d get her nails done. I made her laugh. When I picked up her drycleaning once, the drycleaning worker told me, ‘You can make her happy.’ Another Care Pro said, ‘She’s missing you.’ I called her once after I left her, and she remembered me. I let her know I was thinking of her,” Joyce said.
The client and other Home Instead seniors are benefiting from the experience of an exceptional professional senior-care veteran who joined Home Instead in September 2022 after moving from New York to Florida two months earlier. In New York, Joyce had worked for a nursing home for the past 11 years as a CNA. “In my area of responsibility,” she said, “I worked with nine residents. Before that, I worked in a school cafeteria for 18 years with the same school district.”
Discussing her move to Florida, Joyce said, “I have no relatives here. I know a co-worker from New York who had moved here and is working in child care. Among my new friends here in Florida, one died unexpectedly in November 2022. She was such a nice lady. When I learned of her death, I did the only thing I could think of, and that was to call my church. My faith means a lot to me, and I like that my church and is faith-based.”
Grief struck Joyce and her family early in her life. “My mother died when I was 18 months old. I was brought up by an older sister, my father and an aunt. As a 15-year-old, I started working for a family and took care of their children,” Joyce said.
“I have not been a family caregiver, but I’ve been afforded the joy of taking care of an old family friend when I’ve been back to Jamaica. I once took care of her for the entire day and night. She is bedbound and cannot talk, but she knows me. I rubbed her hand, and she cried. It was as if she was saying, ‘I know you are here.’ Her daughter was happy for the help. I told her daughter I do this kind of work professionally.”
Joyce doesn’t foresee an end to her service to seniors on behalf of Home Instead any time soon. “When my working days are over, I might go back and forth between Florida and Jamaica. I have a daughter in New York and a son in Texas. For now, I like Home Instead. I work with a very nice staff. They have made me feel welcome,” Joyce said.
All Home Instead Care Professionals are screened, trained and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (727) 799-1400 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
