Local entrepreneurs provide aging in-place solution for South Bend-Elkhart seniors
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After his father-in-law suffered a stroke in the middle of the pandemic, Mike Stutz was appalled at the quality of care that independent and assisted living facilities provided.
Running out of options and being so far away, Stutz and his wife decided to sell her parents’ house in Florida and move them to a facility in Indiana. While his father-in-law lived out the rest of his life at Heart to Heart Hospice, one volunteer caught Stutz eye, making him believe in the care system again.
It turned out to be Lisa Phelps, who went to high school with his wife over four decades ago. The chance meeting turned into an opportunity for both Stutz and Phelps, who had decades of professional and volunteer experience in the industry.
“I thought there had to be a better way, so I started looking into opening this type of business, and came across Griswold. Once I found out that we could send people into people’s homes to keep them there, I was interested,” Stutz said. “I asked [Lisa] if she would want to join me, because she has 43 years experience in the personal care business. She adds that experience factor, and she’s such a loving and caring person.”
Stutz and Phelps partnered to open a Griswold Home Care franchise serving people in the South Bend-Elkhart region who want to age in-place or are in need of in-home care earlier this year.
Stutz, who also runs an insurance business, was seeing a lot of his clients enrolled in Medicare heading to a point where they would need the kind of service Griswold provides, further cementing his interest in venturing into the business.
“We offer companionship, which means helping with buying groceries, playing a game, helping them write a letter, helping them to go for a walk. Just having somebody in place that understands them,” Stutz said. “We also offer light housekeeping, meal preparation, laundry, helping them remember to take their medicines, bathing, brushing their teeth. Any type of action where they are having difficulty.”
Stutz speaks about the different services Griswold provides to help seniors age in-place.
Founded in 1982, Griswold provides non-medical home care services, and has more than 200 locations across 32 states. Stutz said his franchise would usually refer folks who need medical attention to other agencies in the area.
“We are licensed as a personal care service agency by the state of Indiana; all of our caregivers go through rigorous background checks and pass specific training,” Stutz said. “There’s such a need to provide a caring service for our older adults.”
Stutz encouraged those exploring care for elderly or terminally-ill family members to check out in-home care options.
“It’s basically going to prolong the life of your loved ones by keeping them in their homes,” he said. “I can’t stress that enough, seeing it with my in-laws, I think everybody wants to stay in their home.”
After leaving her job in palliative care, Phelps started a pet and house-sitting business over two decades ago, her first client lived in a retirement home. Paul, as she fondly recalled, had been forgetting to let his dog out for his business, and his social worker called her.
Realizing that most seniors had to let go of their pets as they aged, Phelps found a section of the pet-sitting world where she could make a real impact.
“I was directly affected by the fact that as they could no longer age in-place, the pets and the owners were separated,” Phelps said. “This business runs in [Michigan] because I moved back here a couple years ago to be closer to my own family.”
Seeing so many seniors unable to age in-place, lacking the requisite support in care homes and eventually dying without a lot of dignity, Phelps wanted to contribute more holistically, but didn’t take the plunge until reuniting with Stutz.
“I just want to serve. I want to do the work,” Phelps said. “I’m good at being side by side, holding the client’s hand, sharing a smile, sharing a gaze, a heart connection, and not so much running the business.”
Phelps said she started volunteering as a way to get more exposure, learn more, and make a real difference in the senior care space.
“I also wanted to make a difference to caregivers. I wanted to provide something different that other caregiving companies may not be doing,” she said. “They have a hard job. I want to be able to support them, give them exactly what they need, and build them up so they can take that back to the client, because it starts with the caregiver.”
Griswold provides a training center for all of its caregivers, including access to scholarships through the Jean Griswold Foundation for employees looking to further their education. With Phelps being a yoga therapist, the Elkhart-based franchise also provides free yoga classes to caregivers who work with them, and those who do not.
Whether just at the local level, policy requiring a plan to care for the large volume of seniors that now reside in our communities, could be the determining factor for how older folks in the Hoosier age.
“The last baby boomer, I believe, will move into retirement age by 2031, and that’s just the youngest of the baby boomers. Nationally, we don’t have a plan in place to begin to care for them,” Council on Aging of Elkhart County CEO Tina Fraley said. “The infrastructure doesn’t exist, and it’s not a priority on everybody’s agenda to change that. A regulation that would require attentiveness to that is what we need right now.”
Fraley hopes to see nonprofit organizations that are passionate about providing space for seniors to age in-place, banding together to amplify the importance of the work they do.
“We do it because there is a gap in service that needs to be provided, not just here in Elkhart County, it’s throughout the state of Indiana,” Fraley said. “To have all a little bit more of a voice that can be heard to help us make sure that gap is filled, would be really nice.”
Currently, there are 17 licensed personal care services agencies in Elkhart County, 75 in St. Joseph County and none in Marshall County, according to data from the Indiana Department of Health.
“We’re just people helping people, that’s our main goal here,” Stutz said. “It’s not to get rich, it’s to help other people, whether it’s a client or a caregiver.”
Difficulties with new state program
In July 2024, Indiana launched the PathWays to Aging program to introduce managed care entities into the health care for residents who are 60 or older and receive Medicaid benefits, including those who are also eligible for Medicare.
“I think the state did a very good job on rolling out the waiver program, which provides in-home services,” Fraley said. “The transportation side was far behind that, and so none of the providers had the time to roll over and contract with the brokers that were needed for that.”
To access the benefit, seniors need to be enrolled with Humana, United Healthcare or Anthem. Fraley said the transition to eligible providers has made the switch even harder for some who need transportation or in-home care.
With just over 16,000 slots for the waiver program through June 2025, there are more than 4,700 individuals in the Health and Wellness Waiver Waiting List, as of November. To get on the list, a person’s level of care needs would be assessed by the area’s local agency on aging. REAL Services in South Bend is the local area agency for the region.
“Some people are seeing a month, two months, three months delay in actually being able to access their service,” Fraley said. “That’s the negative we’re seeing right now. We’ve had clients that have had a gap of 10 weeks in service, and there the gap is still on.”
Bemoaning the lack of funding to help older people get through the period of non-coverage, Fraley said donations have helped fund the nonprofit’s transport service, but not the in-home care service.
“There aren’t grants that we can necessarily go out and apply for with a quick turnaround,” she said. “So it’s really personal donations from our community that can help fill that gap.”