Kayleigh Creighton, MSW, LSWAIC, BFA, CMC, has been with Aging Wisdom since 2012. Before joining our Care Management team, Kayleigh worked at Aging Wisdom for seven years as a Creative Engagement Specialist (CES), providing clients one-on-one life enrichment, creative engagement and companionship. In 2019, she completed her graduate studies in Social Work at the University of Washington, graduating in June with a Master of Social Work (MSW).
Kayleigh’s work as a CES puts her in the unique position of having worked independently, yet collaboratively with the Aging Wisdom Care Management team. Her internships during graduate school included one year with an in-home caregiving agency and the next year at an inpatient hospice facility. Her experiences ranged from home care to help with safety planning, coaching families how to talk with their loved ones about needing more help, and how to accommodate changing client needs over time.
With Hospice she worked on an interdisciplinary team as a liaison between families and medical staff. Her work with families included providing short-term grief counseling and discussing any factors they did not understand about the end-of-life process or the patient’s symptoms and/or treatments. She would also interface with the nurses, frontline support staff, and doctors.
“As a Certified Care Manager, I am able to be whatever a client needs at that particular stage of their life–there is the freedom to pursue whatever best helps that client have a better quality of life and feel safe when having to depend on others because they know they have an advocate. There are a lot of opportunities to help improve the lives of older adults, and I feel there are not nearly enough ways for people to actually find out about these services to access them. That’s where we come in. We serve as the navigators.”