Woman opens house to provide personalized care to the elderly

Janina Jurasius recently moved into a neat, brick ranch surrounded by a yard planted with flowers in Wheaton.

The elderly woman, who came to the United States from Lithuania as a young woman, can no longer live alone because she had a stroke. A full-time caregiver makes her meals of Eastern European food and treats like kolacky. She goes on regular outings to the hairdresser, the Chicago cemetery where her husband is buried, and places such as the Morton Arboretum in Lisle and Cantigny Park in Wheaton. Her family stop by often.

"She is happy here," said Donna Rosiak, who recently purchased the house to provide an alternative to nursing homes for clients who need assistance with daily living. "Here they can have one-on-one almost."

For Rosiak, a Polish immigrant who has run the Sunny Home Care agency in Wheaton for more than 12 years, the home is an extension of the personalized care she tries to provide all her clients.

"Here she can order whatever she wants to eat," Rosiak said. "I'm trying to make it not like a nursing home."

Jurasius is her first live-in client. Rosiak said the home can accommodate four residents comfortably, and she'll consider adding another caregiver after more residents move in.

Depending on the level of care needed, she charges $115 to $150 a day, significantly less than a nursing home, she said. Residents are private pay.

It's a far cry from Rosiak's career as a high school teacher in Poland. But Rosiak, who is single and has an adult daughter in the United States, has embraced her current profession as a calling.

"I like to help people and I like my job very much," she said.

Rosiak first came to the United States 17 years ago for what she intended to be a short stay to see America. But when she returned to Poland, she applied for a visa.

"Life is much easier here," she said. "In Poland, it's a problem to find a job. Here if you want to work, you can find."

Not that adjusting to life in the United States didn't have its problems. Rosiak, who speaks Polish and Russian fluently, didn't know English when she came here. She moved to the suburbs - living in Aurora, Lombard and now Wheaton - in part to force herself to be among Americans and learn English.

"I guessed a lot in the beginning. Sometimes I was right, many times not," she said.

Rosiak spent six years working as a teacher's aide at St. Joseph Catholic School in Aurora. The master's degree she earned in Poland entitled her to teach Polish and Russian at the college level in the United States, but when no opportunities materialized she decided to go into home health care.

She supplies caregivers to work in people's homes as live-ins or on a part-time basis to cook, clean, do laundry and provide assistance as needed. Rosiak said she chooses her workers carefully, conducting background checks and contacting references. She prefers to hire fellow immigrants from Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania. Eastern European immigrants generally are educated and know how to cook, she said.

"Cooking is important, too, because if people like food they are more happy," she said.

Home-care workers do not have to be licensed in Illinois, but Rosiak said those she hires have medical backgrounds as certified nursing assistants or even as doctors in their home countries.

"This is not any job. It's a very special job," she said. "You don't have to be very educated but you have to be intelligent."

Rosiak said she expects caregivers to learn clients' needs even if the clients don't express what they want. Experience and attitude are all-important, she said.

"You have to want to be a caregiver. You have to want to help people," she said.

Bob Kolek of Downers Grove said Rosiak provided caregivers for his mother and mother-in-law for several years as the older women needed increasing amounts of assistance. He remembers Rosiak establishing an instant rapport with his mother, who was in her 90s, at their initial meeting.

"The people she provided were always very, very good," he said. "She would try to find an individual that suited the person who needed to care."

Dr. John Saran, an internist at Edward Hospital, said he has referred patients to Rosiak for home health care after she provided caregivers for his own mother-in-law.

"It must be 10 years I've known Donna," he said.

Rosiak said she hopes to welcome more long-term residents to the home in Wheaton, although she also would be willing to provide respite care for families going on vacation or a long weekend.

She recently opened a second office for her home care agency in Lombard and talks of buying a second house to offer more people home-away-from-home care. At the age of 60, she has no plans to retire, she said.

"I have so much energy. I want to work," she said.

Sunny Home Care may be reached at (630) 653-4541.