Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lance A. Slatton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Lance A., thanks for joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
When I was younger I was a newly-wed continuing my pursuit of medical school. That all changed though when we received a call from a Home Healthcare Nurse notifying us that my father needed to either come live with us while he recovered or he would have to go into a facility.
As a son, there really was never a decision that we wanted him to come and live with us while he continued to recover. However, like most families we didn’t know what we didn’t know.
During the over two and a half years he lived with us I never heard the word “caregiver” and I certainly never identified as a “family caregiver”. The care that my father required was around the clock care or otherwise known as 24/7 care.
This experience and new journey left me wondering how did other families manage this and that there must be help and support available somewhere for families that were going through a similar experience as we were.
I remember vividly calling my wife one day and telling her that I had a solution for how to help others that were in a similar situation as we were. The solution? Start a company that would send people into the home to help support families and their loved ones. Looking back, it is a little embarrassing that I had no idea that there was an entire industry already out there that did this exact thing and it was called home care.
However, to my defense, in over two and half years and multiple surgeries (7) – no social worker, doctor, nurse, or any other healthcare professional had ever offered up any resources or suggestions to help support not only my father, but also us as a family and as his caregivers.
This defining moment had changed the entire trajectory of my professional career. Our family started a home care company not too long after this epiphany and for the past seven years our company has been voted the number one home care company in Michigan.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
After we created our home care company I wanted to help support as many families as we could. I had decided that if we had gone through the experience that we had without ever being given information, support, or guidance on how to handle caring for a loved one or how to navigate the complexities of long-term care that there must be other families that are having the same experience as we are.
This lead me to many corners and communities of Michigan to try and reach these families and help provide them with resources as they embark on the caregiving journey into long-term care.
It first started with churches, senior centers, community centers, assisted and independent living communities by providing educational talks. They quickly gained in popularity and attendance. I then decided that we should have some fun too and quickly incorporated concerts and oldies dances. The dances and concerts were a huge success – with Elvis impersonators and more! After building these relationships and friendships I decided that we needed to find more ways to not only help educate families and their loved ones but also to have some cognitive activities. So, I created several games that we added our own spin to and brought in prizes and treats for the winners.
Hosting these activities and talks were a lot of fun and very beneficial, however, we started to also get request from family members to have something just for them and a way for them to share concerns and questions in a private and confidential manner. This lead to us hosting and facilitating over five caregiver support groups throughout different areas of Michigan for family caregivers to have a place to ask questions, share concerns, and to know that they were not alone.
These activities and educational events helped to launch our next initiative and we started to try and find out what it is that most people needed to know more about and we quickly learned that the answer was dementia.
I had worked exclusively with a renowned dementia expert and we started hosting Dementia Educational Seminars throughout Michigan to help better equip and prepare families of what dementia is and how to best deal with it. For many of these families these seminars were the first time they had ever been given any information on or about dementia.
These seminars were by far the most popular and well-attended events that we hosted. These seminar would typically be a year long and cover a wide-range of topics as it relates to dementia for not only the individual diagnosed with dementia, but also their family and caregivers.
Unfortunately, in 2019 after almost eight years of travelling around Michigan and hosting and facilitating these events I started to become concerned about this serious virus that was plaguing us called COVID-19.
We made a decision to stop all of our public events for the interest of public health and safety before it had become mandated to do so. But with this decision, also came another question of how can we continue to support families and their loved ones? Our company was still in full operation throughout COVID since it was an essential business due to our industry but extracurricular activities were not essential.
That lead me to start looking for a way to continue the support of family caregivers and their loved ones. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon a podcast one evening that the idea had came to me that we could do a podcast for the couple weeks or month that we were to be shut down. I don’t believe any of us realized that it would turn into almost three years.
When we launched All Home Care Matters we admittedly didn’t have any expectations or any real goals other than wanting to continue our work of supporting family caregivers.. After the first month it became clearly evident that COVID-19 was not going to be going away anytime soon and this extended time allowed for me to further develop and craft our show.
The success of All Home Care Matters was not immediate, but rather a gradual climb in viewers and subscribers. After the first 7-8 months it started to quickly grow and that lead to a news outlet reaching out to us asking to do a full featured interview on the show and how it is helping people during the COVID lockdowns.
I have attributed some of our success to that news story and the additional exposure it had provided the show. As the show continued growing by significant numbers we started getting requests from companies, academics, influencers, and family caregivers from all over the world wanting to help share their resources and stories with our audiences and we were glad to help and to be able to share them.
As the shows notoriety grew so did mine as the shows host. This brought offers for writing articles and columns for a multitude of news sites in the healthcare and senior care space that I was honored to be a part of and in March of 2024 my book “The All Home Care Matters Official Family Caregivers’ Guide” was published as another resource for family caregivers on their caregiving journey.
The success of All Home Care Matters and receiving the coveted YouTube Creator Award in 2023 had lead to us also creating two more additional shows Conscious Caregiving with L & L and The Caregiver’s Journal. Both of these shows are unique in their own right, but still focus on helping to support family caregivers.
I have been asked why I am involved with so many projects and what my goal is and that is simple I want to help family caregivers in the best way that I can and to ensure that they know they are not alone. I was given the moniker “The Senior Care Influencer” by a highly respected person in our field and though I don’t consider myself any different than anyone else I like to think that everyone in our industry is “The Senior Care Influencer” in their own way.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I believe that my reputation has been helped by the articles that I write monthly for various news sites, my book “The All Home Care Matters Official Family Caregivers’ Guide” and the shows that I produce All Home Care Matters, Conscious Caregiving L & L, and The Caregiver’s Journal.
However, I am also a firm believer that your reputation and name is everything. I work hard to always operate with good integrity and honesty. We have been approached numerous times by companies and individuals that I would not want to be associated with – regardless of any financial incentive. Furthermore, I also believe that treating peers in your industry with respect and offering to help support them in their works is vitally important given the nature of our industry.
We are all here (hopefully) to help share resources and information to the over 50 plus million unpaid family caregivers that are often left having to figure things out on their own. We are stronger together than divided.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
I shared earlier that I was originally pursuing medical school when we learned that my father was sick and that experience changed the trajectory of my career.
Recently, I was being interviewed and was asked for the first time that I can recall if I had ever had any regrets about not continuing with my pursuit of medical school. I admittedly never had given that a thought for a second.
My answer to the interviewer was a simple, no. The reason I was pursuing medical school and becoming a doctor was to help people in a very meaningful and oftentimes difficult time in their life. Simply put: I wanted to help people.
With my career as a Senior Case Manager and as “The Senior Care Influencer” and our shows, articles, and book I like to think that I am helping people more than I ever could have hoped or imagined.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lanceaslatton.com and https://www.allhomecarematters.com
- Instagram: @officiallanceaslatton @allhomecarematters
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AllHomeCareMatters and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558066137913
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/allhomecarematters/
- Twitter: @allhcms and @lanceaslatton
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AllHomeCareMatters
