Archive for category: Homeland Center News

For 49 years, Pauline Neal delivers joy!

Pauline Neal has trained thousands of Homeland employees, and she tells them all the same thing she heard when she was hired in 1959.

“Always remember that this facility doesn’t belong to anyone but the people who live here,” the Homeland matron told Pauline. “It’s their home. It’s not ours. We’re invited guests in their home, and we’re paid invited guests.”

The native of Huntingdon, PA, first worked in Harrisburg facilities as a nurses’ aide. She never worked in a nursing capacity for Homeland, but for 49 years, she has held multiple caregiving roles – as director of housekeeping and linens, food services director, resident liaison, and now, part-time receptionist.

A mainstay for nearly one-third of Homeland’s 150 years, Pauline has touched countless lives through her attention to detail, her empathy for residents and families, and her devotion to keeping the “home” in Homeland.

Pauline’s first Homeland job, cleaning rooms to prepare for inspection of newly constructed wings, was meant to last one week. On the second morning, the assistant superintendent told her he had inspected every room and wanted to discuss the quality of her work. The young Pauline waited for the ax to fall.

The rooms were spotless, he said. And then he asked, “How would you like a full-time job here?”

In those days, three trunks in the basement were filled with baby clothes, recalling the time when Homeland accepted children. The washing machine required a staffer manning a pedal to run the spin cycle. The person running the behemoth dryer set the temperature by reaching in to adjust the gas flame. When new laundry equipment arrived, doors into the basement had to be enlarged to fit it all.

“It was a mess, but it was so much fun,” Pauline recalls. “Everything that we had here involved all the employees. There wasn’t one department that was better than the other.”

Pauline’s years coincided with Homeland’s concerted efforts to comply with rising regulations and instill excellence as its hallmark. She would tell staff, “Everyone is a special guest and should be treated as such.”

When the nearby Three Mile Island nuclear plant nearly melted down in 1979, Pauline and Homeland staff packed up clothing and medications, and then boarded residents on two buses and “I don’t know how many ambulances.” For five days, the evacuees lived in a former tuberculosis sanatorium and the dorms of Wilson College, both in Chambersburg, where Pauline and colleagues kept watch.

“We made sure they were fed and bathed and tried to do activities to keep them occupied,” she says. “Nobody got sick. That was traumatic for a lot of those people. You had to be very calm.”

After retiring in 2004, Pauline served as a part-time resident liaison, ensuring that residents and families got everything they needed. She remains in touch with many families. They bring her peanut butter eggs at Easter and send flowers on Mother’s Day. The stack of thank-you cards she keeps at the front desk includes one from a former resident’s daughter.

“Thank you for all your help, support, expertise and kindness when my mother was in Homeland,” the note reads. “You are a class act.”

Such sentiments mean the world to Pauline. She believes she is blessed because she found a job as a young woman and landed among people “who cared about me enough to help me grow.”

“My dedication is to the residents and their families,” she says. “I was taught that you put Jesus first, others second, and yourself last, and you will always have joy.”

Roxane Hearn motivates Homeland’s staff to be their best!

Homeland Center CNA Symira McNeely was motivated to improve her health and appearance, but on the way to losing 45 pounds, her apparent lack of progress could get discouraging. That’s when Homeland Health and Wellness Director Roxane Hearn would draw from her arsenal of motivational tools.

“Roxane told me that it’s not always about what the scale says,” McNeely recalls now. “The scale may not be moving, but you might be healthier. She wants you to be happy. Happy and healthy.”

At Homeland Center, employee wellness is a linchpin in assuring that the staff caring for residents are vigorous, capable, and contented. Its unique approach calls on Hearn, a highly qualified coach with a Ph.D. in health psychology, to deliver programs and services that inspire Homeland staff to not only reshape their bodies but also manage the daily demands of staying healthy.

“Change is not easy,” says Hearn. “Working as a health coach, I take the employees through that process and support them and coach them. I guide them along the way when they relapse and keep them on track when they’re maintaining.”

With employees busy work days, Hearn can turn a few hallway moments into a personalized health consultation. Plus, none of her wellness initiatives are cookie-cutter. She loves Homeland because “they trust me and give me top-down support. I’ll pitch ideas. They give their ideas, and we come up with something that fits the employees.”

Hearn’s customized initiatives include:

• Weight loss and wellness: Weight loss contests and cash awards for taking wellness actions provide encouragement year-round.
• Healthy eating: Healthy soup cook-offs and “employee farmers market,” when staffers bring fruit and veggie snacks for all to share, encourage recipe-sharing and better eating.
• Individualized wellness consultations and regular screenings: Hearn helps employees make doctor’s appointments, advocates for changes when medications are ineffective, and reviews lab reports one-on-one. She shares the results of her screenings with physicians’ offices and monitors staffers to make sure their medications are effective. It’s all meant to assure that important health tasks, like making a doctor’s appointment or changing ineffective medications, don’t get lost in the daily rush of work and home responsibilities.
• Fitness: Hearn conducts personal training consultations, meets employees in gyms, leads workout walks in parks, and runs fitness boot camps. McNeely learned from Hearn about the discount, all-access fitness-center memberships offered through Homeland’s health insurance, and now she’s a gym devotee, doing Tai Bo, Zumba, and just about anything else at gyms throughout the area.
• Leveraging technology: Texting is Hearn’s “priceless tool of engagement,” allowing her to share photos of healthy food and send messages of encouragement – no matter how crazy the recipient’s schedule. She also conducts health coaching by phone and email with employees who work offsite, and she uses social media engagement to build relationships and understand staffers’ goals.

McNeely loves working at Homeland, where workplace “is like a family.” She knows that her healthier lifestyle has improved her job performance.

“Residents definitely noticed when I was going through the changes,” she says. “My energy level is through the sky. They say, ‘You’re not tired yet?’”

McNeely once never drank water, but now she leads the way in encouraging coworkers to drink their water. That’s what Hearn is striving for — to empower Homeland staff to take charge of wellness among themselves. It’s all in pursuit of sustaining excellent care provided by healthy, happy staff.

“The residents love the employees,” Hearn says. “They like to see them cheery and happy. It’s hard to be that all the time, but in this particular line of business, you have to be. We are working in their home. If I can teach employees to cope with stress and how to park it at the door, it means a safer environment and happier residents.”