Senior concierge service a growing demand
By Mac McLean / The Bulletin / @agingbeat
Published Aug 30, 2013 at 05:00AM / Updated Nov 19, 2013 at 12:31AM
Raising a teenager when you’re in your mid-50s is tough.
But when you add caring for a parent who recently suffered a stroke into the mix - a situation one of Wendy McInnis-Hall’s clients recently encountered - the stress can get overwhelming. Things like paying bills, running errands and picking up medication can fall through the cracks.
McInnis-Hall hopes her new business, Life Tree Personal Services, LLC, can help relieve some of the burden faced by baby boomers in this dual caregiver role and by seniors who want to continue living at home.
“People may not realize some of the things they need help with,” said McInnis-Hall, who started her senior concierge business two months ago. Before opening this business, she spent 12 years working with people who have developmental disabilities in Crook County and in Bend.
Even though she’s relatively new at the game, McInnis-Hall already has a list of about eight clients who she helps on a monthly basis or as needed. She helps these clients by running errands, picking up their medication, taking care of their grocery shopping and performing other tasks.
She also spends time with seniors so their loved ones can get a break, comes up with ways to make sure people take their medication properly, and ensures their bills get paid on time.
McInnis-Hall’s business and other senior concierge service businesses have been sprouting up across the country lately and are just one of a few ways people are working to meet a huge demand for services that will be created as the country’s 77 million baby boomers get older.
“It’s a huge market for our industry,” said Katharine Giovanni, founder of the International Concierge and Lifestyle Management Association, a North Carolina-based association that represents more than 200 concierge businesses around the globe.
Giovanni said the sheer number of boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — makes them a great population for her industry to serve as they age. Boomers want to continue leading particularly active lives that have a lot of tasks to manage, they want to stay in their homes as long as possible, and they had some of their children relatively late in life, she said.
“These people are going to need our services because their children are now strapped for time and now have their own careers and families to manage,” Giovanni said. She says most of the personal concierge services in her organization cater to seniors as well as people who are younger than them.
“There’s definitely been an increase (in the number of these businesses),” said Pat Brengman, president of the National Concierge Association, a Minneapolis-based organization that represents almost 500 corporate, residential and leisure concierge businesses in the country.
Brengman said that while she’s heard a lot of talk about senior concierge services, it’s still too soon to tell exactly how many such services exist because the business model is so new.
She sees these services as being the next logical step for the concierge services industry that has made its way from luxury hotels and resorts to convention centers, corporate office buildings, and most recently into people’s homes, hospitals and other health care facilities.
“There’s definitely a need for them,” she said.
Offering the same advice she gives to people who are shopping for a traditional concierge service, Brengman said it’s important to consider the person’s references and how long they have been working in the field. But she also said this last quality can be a little difficult to assess because most senior concierge services are just getting started right now and it may be hard to find one that’s had a lot of time in the game.
Finding help
According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, the number of people who are 65 or older is expected to increase until seniors make up 20 percent of the U.S. population by 2050. Three different types of businesses and groups are springing up to help seniors stay at home and give their caregivers some relief:
• Senior concierge services
An offshoot of the traditional concierge industry, senior concierge services help people with tasks — such as running errands, groceries and paying bills — that their clients may be too busy or unable to perform by themselves.
• Virtual villages
Virtual villages are community-based membership organizations for seniors who live at home and independently volunteer to help each other perform tasks such as going to the doctor, minor home repairs and wateringplants.
• Home-care services
These businesses send for-profit or state-supported home-care workers to a person’s home to provide them with companionship, help them take care of tasks such as running errands and preparing meals, and to help them perform certain activities of daily life, such as using the bathroom or taking medications.
