By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A new service to Buchanan County is helping to provide training for caregivers taking care of loved ones or friends at home.
Former Buchanan County Commissioner Lee Sawyer says this service is important in the county because of a lack of training for caregiving at home.
"The main goal is that when people go home from the hospital, if they've had some type of surgery or they've had some other type of situation, you want them to have good care at home and not have to go back into the hospital for that situation," Sawyer explains to host of the KFEQ Hotline Barry Birr.
"And so, that's what a lot of this content and a lot of what Trualta brings is this ability to help people take care of their family members for all kinds of different reasons."
The training is provided at no cost to caregivers thanks to fund from the American Rescue Plan in the county.
Local Trualata Representative Darci Henry says people are being cared for at home longer and living at home with chronic illnesses for long periods of time.
"When you're in the hospital or you're on home health services you're having professionals come in and provide that care to you which is great," Henry says. "But once your discharged from those services and the family kind of takes over as the primary support system, most of those family caregivers are not trained, so this is a way to give professional grade training and support to people who maybe have no experience giving care of any kind."
Since launch in November of last year, Henry says 90 caregivers have been brought on board for training.
Sawyer says the contract with Trualta is for two years, but after that two years there are various ways, the service could be provided.
"It may be something where Buchanan County decides they want to continue to give that service, it may be that a Mosaic or somebody says hey this has been valuable to our patients we would like to continue on," Sawyer points out. "So, there's various ways to keep this funded going forward."
Sawyer says two years is a really good amount of time to get people engaged and see what value the program can bring.
More information can be found about Trualta HERE.