I am the founder and president of a group called Solva Senior Living. We are Ottawa's Retirement Home Search Consultants. This Blog is a way for us to communicate and provide the community with helpful information, resources, news and tools for local issues related to aging.
A Little Bit About Us:
Growing up, much of my childhood was spent spending time in a Long Term Care facility in Cornwall, Ontario. As my mom was a nurse and worked shift work, my brother was an orderly and my aunt and cousins worked in administration. I have found memories running through the hallways, visiting with the residents and watching my mother in the nursing department.
In 1996, I began working there in the dietary department. A few years later relocated to Ottawa for school and later began working at a Long Term Care facility in Ottawa, The Glebe Centre. My favorite task while working at the Glebe Centre was providing group tours to families looking at moving in a loved one. Answering their many questions and providing them with the answers that ultimately helped them make informed decisions felt extremely rewarding. Throughout the years, I became proficient with various medical needs of geriatric patients including Dementia and Alzheimer's. I also became aware of the issues related to families and caregivers of aging loved one's. At that point, I was convinced that I was going to pursue a career as an Administrator of Long Term Care, so I took some courses and completed the Long Term Care Management Program with the Canadian Healthcare Association.
Craving more experience and challenges, I moved over to the Retirement Home Industry and accepted a role with Central Park Lodges (now Revera). I accepted the role as Director of Marketing for Colonel By Retirement Residence. This role was to lease the accommodations and promote the offerings. Because Colonel By was a retirement residences, I spent much time educating families of aging loved one's on navigating the continuum of care and the resources available to them in our community. My passion was and is still to support families while making difficult decisions.
Within a year, I was promoted into various roles with Revera including General Manager and Regional Director of Sales & Marketing. As a Regional Director I was responsible to oversee the leasing of over 18 properties in Eastern Ontario, including 13 in the Ottawa area. I spent a significant amount of time studying the local retirement home market place and created many corporate reports analyzing the competition. I also trained the site level sales teams, established marketing strategies and marketing language. In 2011, I was recruited as the Corporate Director of Sales & Marketing for a company called Leisureworld where I oversaw The Royale Ottawa and The Royale Kingston. My workload was similar to before but I took on much more operational responsibilities including establishing rates and fee structures etc..
In 2013, after a year long Maternity leave, I created Solva Senior Living to basically switch the sides of the table that I work on and help those understand the sales processes, marketing language, support them with knowledge and information during a time of great change. Ultimately save them time and give them piece of mind that they are making informed decisions.
When I decided to create Solva, ethically I did not want to charge the public for sharing information but have no issue charging the retirement homes. Thus, I set out to establish a network of retirement homes of which have agreed to cover the costs of the individuals search. We have established a large network of reputable and licensed homes throughout Ottawa. And we are always trying to add to our network with the goal of having all the retirement homes included.
Our service is a personal one on one service. We will answer your questions over the phone then we can meet with you in your home or place of convenience. In a casual setting we will get to know you or your loved one. We will them recommend residences not just based on your financial needs but also social, medical, cultural, personality and lifestyle. Often we provide options that you would have not considered. We then can arrange and escort you on tours. We represent you with the retirement homes sales teams and we ensure you ask all the right questions. Finally, we help you compare the offerings apples to apples to ensure that you are making informed decisions. We then can help you arrange transition services including those who will professional downsize your home.
Our service is free with no sales pitch, just time saving information.
Call us today 613-421-6073
www.solvaseniorliving.ca
Looking forward to hearing from you!
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If you are looking for in-home help for seniors Thorncliffe Place is a great resource. They use high-quality, screened staff and care about their clients.
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