Janis Rodgers, MSW/LSW

Geriatric Care Manager

As many helping professionals will attest to, this line of work is less of a job and more of a calling. I had always been told that I was a good listener, easy to talk to, cool, calm, and collected, however I never thought about how to turn those skills into a career.

When my husband joined the Navy, I began volunteering as the Command “Ombudsman”: a spouse liaison between Command leadership and the Homefront spouses and families. While the service members were deployed, I was on the front line helping families deal with everything from the cancer diagnosis of a child to figuring military healthcare benefits. When one spouse went into early labor while her husband was deployed and no family nearby, I cleaned her house, made sure her dogs were taken care of, installed a carseat, and stayed with her at the hospital.

This eventually led to a job as a Family Support Coordinator with the Navy and my Masters in Social Work. Since that time, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a variety of populations— people with Traumatic Brain Injury, people experiencing homelessness, and seniors and their caregivers. I didn’t anticipate how much joy I would find in helping families come up with care plans for their senior loved ones. Geriatric care management provides an unparalleled ability to help families find peace of mind and come up with solutions that are the best fit for them.