Family & Nursing Care was recently recognized by the Washington Business Journal as one of the top 15 midsize companies for giving in the Greater D.C. area. The Family & Nursing Care Foundation plays a big role in the company’s philanthropic efforts.

“When I founded Family & Nursing Care in 1968, my dream was to provide older adults and their families peace of mind by offering them a resource for reliable, dedicated, and compassionate home care whenever it was needed,” says Family & Nursing Care’s founder and visionary, Sandy Kursban.

At Family & Nursing Care, they clearly understand that the cost of home care may be a barrier for lower income older adults who could benefit from home care. That’s why Sandy established the Family & Nursing Care Foundation, a fund of the Greater Washington Community Foundation, in 2008.  Through grants to community partners the Foundation helps lower-income older adults gain access to needed home care.

“It warms my heart that so many members of our Family & Nursing Care staff have chosen and continue to choose to make donations to the Family & Nursing Care Foundation – whether through payroll deduction, at our annual holiday party, or through initiatives such as our GivHero challenge,” says Sandy.

Fostering the Next Generation of Caregivers

The Family & Nursing Care Foundation not only helps low-income older adults to have access to quality home care, but the Foundation also awards scholarship funds to Montgomery College to help local students become the next generation of trained Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs).

Sandy says it’s rewarding to talk with the scholarship recipients – especially upon graduation – and hear how grateful they are for the support that provided them an opportunity to not only improve their lives, but also the lives of others.

“This is what my life, both personal and professional, is all about,” says Sandy. “With the work of the Foundation, our commitment to helping others can extend to more people than ever before.”

Sandy recalls a time when a scholarship recipient inquired with her about joining Family & Nursing Care as a Caregiver. After following Sandy’s guidance and gaining two years of long-term care experience in a nursing home or private duty setting (Family & Nursing Care’s prerequisite for onboarding Caregivers), the CNA scholarship recipient is now a Caregiver with Family & Nursing Care and is helping to improve the lives of clients through compassionate care.

What’s Next

The number of Americans aged 65 and older is projected to more than double to 98 million by 2060, and Maryland’s projected population of people over 60 is expected to make up 26% of the 6.7 million total population by 2030. Recent studies have shown that there will need to be more than 1.3 million new Caregivers to meet the home care demand for this growing population.

“I started the Foundation because I wanted to offer assistance for older adults who couldn’t afford care,” says Sandy. “Now, it’s also really important to make sure that we have enough Caregivers as the population ages.”

It is the Foundation’s goal to continue to advocate for low-income seniors and the care they deserve, all while supporting the next generation of Caregivers who will provide care for those seniors.

“Together, we can make a huge difference in the lives of so many others,” Sandy says.

Learn more about the Foundation here.

Lauren Whaley joined the Family & Nursing Care team in October of 2020 as a Client Services Manager Associate. In her short time with us, she has already made a big impact, including receiving a promotion and assuming a full caseload as a Client Services Manager.

The wealth of knowledge she gained assisting families in need through her prior work at Make-a-Wish Foundation and Easterseals, paired with her diverse skill set and passion to enhance the lives of others, has allowed her to jump right into her expanded role. Lauren provides home visits to her clients to better understand their needs, assists with our afterhours program, and more!

As a Client Services Manager, Lauren’s attention to detail, dependability, organization, and calm demeanor allows her to effectively communicate and connect with clients and co-workers alike.

A graduate of University of Maryland, Lauren enjoys spending her free time with her family, staying active with yoga and Peloton, and traveling.

We like to describe Lea Picard as “picture-perfect”. Not only does she dabble in photography as a hobby, she also perfectly represents our guiding values of honoring, empowering, and supporting clients and their families in every possible way. She’s worked as a Client Services Manager at Family & Nursing Care for over two years, playing an important role in the company’s expansion goals: working with clients, professionals, and families in the Howard County region as we expand services to meet the needs of those in the area. Lea is also the Client Services Manager for the Seabury care management group, helping to assist their clients with private duty home care needs.

Lea loves forming meaningful connections with clients, which is why her favorite part of her job is going on home visits to clients. Always ready, willing, and able to lend a helping hand, Lea volunteered her time during COVID-19 in 2020 to assist in preparing and distributing much needed PPE packages to Caregivers.

Next month, Lea will be volunteering her time once again to help someone in the Family & Nursing Care family – she’ll be working as the photographer at a co-worker’s wedding!

With a dedicated staff whose daily work activities revolve around being responsive to the needs of clients and their families, caregivers, and professionals, the Human Resources team at Family & Nursing Care puts a special focus on making sure the staff themselves have opportunities to attend to their own personal wellness.

Over time, HR has introduced programs to meet these needs, like making baskets of healthy fruit available in the office, ordering in a salad bar for lunch once a week, and providing discounts on gym memberships.  As COVID-19 took hold in 2020, some of these initiatives became displaced while more of the staff began to work from home.

With the staff needing to put forth even more effort to attend to the needs of others and attention to personal health and wellness becoming even more important during this time, the HR team deliberated on how to motivate the staff to continue meeting personal wellness goals.  Then they found GivHero.

GivHero is an app that offers an innovative solution to support workplace wellness and social causes. Through the GivHero app, staff can compete in wellness challenges and easily track their progress toward meeting the challenge goals through syncing their smartphone, watch, or other tracking device to the app, or through manual entry.  The reward for meeting the goal is a donation from the company to one of a number of social causes or charities selected by the staff member themselves.  Along the way, staff can check up on co-workers’ progress and offer support to coworkers toward meeting their goals, or even engage in some good-natured competition.

For the initial GivHero challenge, a goal was set for Family & Nursing Care staff to take 5,000 steps a day for one month. Family & Nursing Care donated $1 per participant to the charitable cause of the staff member’s choice for every day that the goal was met.  Over 30 participants stepped their way to donating $564 to charity and enjoyed some friendly encouragement and competition along the way.  Over the course of the month, 5,260,363 collective steps were taken by Family & Nursing Care staff members.  Enough steps to walk from the Silver Spring office all the way to Los Angeles!

As she works to put together the next challenge, HR Manager Gabriela Marr is quite happy with the results GivHero has already provided.  “With an entire staff who innately have that giving spirit, what better way to motivate them to focus on their own health and wellness than by offering them a chance to give back while doing it,” she said.