2016 BrightStar Care Grosse Pointe Caregiver of the Year, Linda Reynolds

The Hardy Family would like to nominate our caregiver Linda Reynolds as Caregiver of the year 2016. Our family is working through the challenges of caring for an aging parent with dementia and Linda is an integral part of our family plan. Linda handles all the grocery shopping and meal planning for our family. She cooks homemade well balanced meals while keeping costs down. She actively seeks to make our dollars stretch, checking for sales and even using her own Costco membership. She always stays within our monthly budget and provides a detailed reconciliation of expenses. If Linda sees a bargain at the store, she often makes purchases for us on her day off. Linda really goes out of her way to provide special meals for our family and will even start a meal at her own home if the meal is very time consuming. She always does her very best to make our house “a home”. On a recent visit where our family all met at the house to celebrate a birthday, Linda had the house shining clean and even made the birthday cake for us! She is always looking for ways to help us ease the burden and increase the happiness and well-being of the household. The challenges of working with a client with dementia cannot be understated. Because of the confusion caused by the disease, everyday tasks become difficult and instructions must often be explained and repeated many times. This is the environment that Linda is working in and she always shows our family patience and kindness. Our family relies on Linda to be our “eyes and ears” and she does an excellent job keeping us informed on issues in the household. When Linda is on site, we are completely confident that our family is safe and well taken care of. She is 100% dependable, professional, and is flexible when unexpected needs arise. In summary, Linda consistently provides compassionate care and kindness. She is always looking for ways to help our family and we rely on her more and more. She takes our family member on visits and other errands and we trust her unequivocally with the safety of our loved one. Even when she is not actively working for us, she is always thinking of us. It is very evident that Linda has a genuine concern and compassion for our family. For these reasons, and so many more, we would be so thrilled if Linda could be recognized for the outstanding care she provides, by being selected as the 2016 Caregiver of the Year. Listen to Linda in her own words as she speaks on her role in providing care to her clients on our YouTube channel here: August 2016