MEET YOUR SENIOR CARE MANAGERS
Experience Matters When It Comes to Someone You Love.
West Michigan Senior Care is led by Janis and Jennifer, who bring more than 30 years of combined experience across healthcare, senior care, family caregiving, community leadership, and complex coordination.
As Senior Care Managers, we work directly with older adults and their families throughout West Michigan. One of us becomes your family’s dedicated Senior Care Manager and remains personally responsible for the work we are doing with your loved one.
Our experience shapes how closely we pay attention, how we prepare, the questions we ask, how we communicate with families and professionals, and how we follow through when something needs attention.
Why We Started West Michigan Senior Care
Our careers have allowed us to see aging from many perspectives. We have worked directly with older adults, families, healthcare professionals, community organizations, and people facing decisions that can affect health, independence, everyday life, and future care.
Again and again, we saw how quickly those areas begin to overlap. A change noticed at home may matter at the next healthcare appointment. A hospitalization can introduce new medications, therapy, equipment, follow-up appointments, and services almost overnight. Memory concerns can begin affecting responsibilities that had been handled independently for years.
We also saw how valuable it is when someone has the time and experience to understand the person as well as the larger situation surrounding them.
That is why we created West Michigan Senior Care.
We built a practice centered around experienced Senior Care Manager involvement that can extend across everyday life, healthcare, family communication, services, and larger care decisions while keeping the older adult at the center of it all.
This is the work we chose to build our practice around, and it is the standard we bring to every family we serve.
Janis Stickel
Co-Founder & Senior Care Manager
Janis brings more than 12 years of hands-on healthcare and senior-care experience to her work as a Senior Care Manager. Her background spans home-based care, long-term care, assisted living, memory care, hospice, medication support, and direct work with older adults and individuals living with complex medical, physical, cognitive, and neurological conditions.
Years spent working closely with people across different stages of health and aging gave Janis a strong understanding of how much can be learned by looking at the whole person. Mobility, cognition, medications, nutrition, communication, mood, daily routines, the home environment, and changes in function can each provide important information about how someone is doing and what may deserve attention.
As a Senior Care Manager, Janis works closely with older adults in their homes and communities, prepares for and attends healthcare appointments, follows changes over time, organizes relevant care information, communicates with families and authorized professionals, and helps carry important recommendations into everyday life.
One of Janis’s greatest strengths is recognizing how the different parts of a person’s health and daily life connect. She pays close attention to what is typical for each individual, notices when something begins to shift, and brings those observations into the larger picture surrounding their care.
Her approach is thoughtful, observant, and direct. She takes the responsibility of knowing someone well seriously and believes older adults should remain actively involved in the choices and decisions that affect their lives.
Jennifer Smith
Co-Founder & Senior Care Manager
Jennifer brings more than 20 years of leadership, coordination, communication, community involvement, and organizational experience to her work as a Senior Care Manager. Her career has required her to manage complex responsibilities, work across professionals and organizations, handle highly sensitive information, bring people together around shared priorities, and maintain strong follow-through when many details are moving at once.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Community Development and Public Administration. Her professional experience spans leadership, program development, community partnerships, project coordination, and work requiring discretion, careful communication, organization, and sound decision-making.
As a Senior Care Manager, Jennifer coordinates appointments, providers, services, recommendations, family communication, transitions, and the broader responsibilities surrounding an older adult’s care. She is particularly skilled at seeing how the different parts of a complicated situation connect and creating the structure needed to keep important information, people, and responsibilities moving together.
Jennifer’s understanding of the family side of aging is also personal. Caring for both of her parents gave her firsthand understanding of the responsibility families carry when health concerns, appointments, decisions, and everyday life begin overlapping.
Jennifer brings a steady, thoughtful presence to complicated situations. She listens carefully, asks questions that help uncover what needs attention, and brings organization and direction when several people, priorities, and decisions are involved.
Her ability to manage complexity while keeping the older adult’s needs, preferences, and priorities visible is central to the work she does with West Michigan Senior Care families.
THE STANDARD BEHIND OUR WORK
The Details Matter When Someone Entrusts You With Their Care.
Families trust us with personal information, healthcare conversations, important observations, family concerns, changing circumstances, and decisions that can have a real impact on someone’s life. We take that responsibility seriously.
Our work is approached with preparation, discretion, careful documentation, clear communication, and consistent follow-through. We stay familiar with the details of each situation so that important information can be carried into future conversations, appointments, and decisions.
We take responsibility for the areas entrusted to us and follow them through. When something deserves attention, we make sure it is understood, communicated, organized, and carried forward appropriately.
We intentionally serve a limited number of families so we can remain personally involved and give each relationship the time and attention this level of work requires.
30+ YEARS
Combined Experience
FOUNDER-LED
Senior Care Management
ONE DEDICATED
Senior Care Manager
WEST MICHIGAN
Local Knowledge & Connections
Speak With a Senior Care Manager Today
COMPLIMENTARY INITIAL CONVERSATION
Your complimentary conversation is a chance to tell us what has been happening with your loved one, what you have been noticing, and where your family could use help.
You will speak directly with Janis or Jennifer. We will answer your questions, explain how our services work, and recommend the level of Senior Care Manager involvement that fits your loved one and family.
Call us today and speak directly with a Senior Care Manager.