What is Home Instead?

It is the all-important question. It is the one thing that every small business owner should be ready and able to articulate within 30 seconds. It is the query you hope someone will ask. Yet after as many years as I have run Home Instead I still find myself struggling to answer this very basic question.
It isn't that I don't know. It isn't that I struggle finding the words to describe what we do. It is that our mission is so much broader than what we functionally accomplish in our day to day work. Functionally, Home Instead Senior Care provides non-medical assistance to seniors throughout Orange and NE Chatham county. We provide services such as companionship, meal preparation, medication reminders, incidental transportation, light housekeeping, Alzheimer's and personal care. But we provide much more than that.
Home Instead is a state of mind. It is a choice. It is a commitment by seniors and their families to live life on their own terms. It is the stubborn refusal to be a spectator during what should be an amazing chapter of life. Many times there is a physical expression of living Home Instead. 'I am Home Instead of ______.' However, many of our clients have transitioned to communities and care facilities that have now become home. Even in these environments, it is still possible to live 'Home Instead.'
Beyond the clients are their families. This is a place where living 'Home Instead' really sets itself apart from living any other way. The daughter waking up after her first full night of sleep in three months is living 'Home Instead.' The father now able to leave his mother's side long enough to attend his daughter's volleyball tournament is living 'Home Instead.' The family that smiles at a parent's memorial service, knowing that they did all that they could do to make those last years wonderful knows better than anyone what living 'Home Instead' is all about.
To the gentleman who stopped me at Walgreen's this weekend, I apologize if I seemed at a loss for words when you asked me what Home Instead does. We give seniors and their families a choice between just living and living 'Home Instead.'