Showing Tender Mercy
Chris and Lauren Glenn offer Bell County Resident compassionate in-home care
By Amy Rognlie | Photo courtesy of Chris and Lauren Glenn
Chris and Lauren Glenn had a dream to own a business in Bell County. Texan natives, the Glenns have lived in the area for 10 years and long desired to make a lasting contribution to their community. Both local educators, the couple knew they wanted to use their talents to help others.
“We prayed about owning our own business for a long time,” Dr. Lauren Glenn says. “We never thought we’d be involved in the health care sector, but here we are.”
In 2020, the couple’s dream became a reality when they acquired Tender Mercies Compassionate In-Home Care from founders Tony and Shana Jeter — just as the pandemic began. After personal experience caring for their own aging loved ones, the Glenns strongly desired to help the elderly in their community as well as the families who are stretched thin by the demands of caring for a loved one. Tender Mercies’ non-medical home care services are available for seniors who need assistance with activities of daily living while staying in the comfort of their own homes.
The Glenns meet with each prospective client and their family members, after which Lauren develops an individualized service plan tailored to the client’s needs.
“Our scheduling approach is truly unique,” she says. “In lieu of filling a schedule by just trying to make sure each vacancy has a caregiver, we actually take the time, thought, and care to create teams around each client. We do this to offer consistency for them, the right fit (personality and skills), and also to create good situations for our staff’s personal strengths. We maintain incredible employee tenure in an industry that is really struggling to hire and retain high-quality people.” Currently, Tender Mercies employs 35 to 40 caregivers, most of whom work full time.
“We stay personally involved in our clients’ and their families’ needs by treating them like our own,” Lauren says. “We have all too often seen and personally experienced the dark side of elder care, which has inspired us to be a part of the solution. The elders in our care require proactive advocacy if they’re to receive quality care.”
The Tender Mercies staff often encounter situations that are emotional and challenging for their clients and their families, such as physical decline and dementia diagnoses. Many times, the family members are learning to navigate the elder-care industry for the first time, trying to come to terms with ailing and changing loved ones, managing finances, communicating with doctors, and making a lot of decisions they have not had to think about previously. As Tender Mercies’ Care Coordinator, Lauren and her assistant, Quality Care Coordinator Jo Ann Shine, enjoy collaborating with clients, family members and health care providers to learn what will most help the individual in their care as well as what level of assistance the family members need.
Lauren is especially sensitive to the issues surrounding mental health and dementia, as she has many years of personal experience advocating for a loved one who suffered from a mental disorder.
“I feel that God has equipped me, through some painful life experiences, to navigate the very challenging valley that family members have to traverse when a loved one has dementia,” she says. “I have a ton of experience dealing with doctors, insurance, and hospitals and other agencies because of my own situation.”
Lauren uses that experience every day as she works with her caregivers to learn individual clients’ triggers, fears and reactions in order to formulate options to redirect dementia behaviors so that her clients feel safe and secure at home. “I definitely feel that God has placed us in this role for specific people in this community. We have a handful of individuals who have no family whatsoever, and we feel a tremendous amount of responsibility for them.”
For Chris, the best part of his job is knowing that he and Lauren are providing a service they wish they would have known about when their own family members were growing older. “It is truly heartbreaking and exhausting for families caring for aging loved ones, and offering the level of service we offer is quite satisfying,” he says. “Our future vision includes working to creatively recruit and retain caregivers who are in the field for the right reasons and want to be a part of something that is truly a ministry.”
TENDER MERCIES
Website: www.tendermerciestx.com
Phone: 254-899-2400
