Melinda Tuhus Photo
Not only is the new site of a growing home care operation ideally situated for ease of reaching its 700 patients. The view at a ribbon-cutting wasn’t bad either.
The operation, Family Care Visiting Nurse and Home Care Agency, opened its new office Thursday at 495 Blake St., one block from Westville Village, in a rehabbed factory building with exposed brick walls and enormous windows — and a view to New Haven’s iconic West Rock right behind.
The agency moved from 419 Whalley Ave. to bigger space, from which its 60 employees provide home care to its large and growing patient load, more than half of them in New Haven and the rest in surrounding towns.
Melissa Lavoie (pictured on the right), director of office operations, said patients range from infants to centenarians. “We meet the needs of psych patients, we meet the needs of dementia, we do med administration; we have a very excellent rehab program.”
“Home care is very big in all the states,” she added, “because clients want to be home. We work with hospitals’ short-term rehab. We work with nursing facilities. We even work with Money Follows the Person, which is the new program that’s coming out for those who are [in] long-term placement but want to go home.” That’s a $56 million program funded with federal stimulus money targeting the 18,000 Medicaid recipients currently in nursing homes, making grants available for home care.
Several dozen staff and well-wishers crowded around the entrance as owner/administrator Rita Krett did the ribbon-cutting honors.