Founder’s Story
Hi, my name is Ken Ziel and I am the founder of CareGiver360®. The past 25 years of my life have acted as a training session on how to provide compassionate care.
As a young adult, I traveled to many countries, observing how communities and families came together to seek and provide care in the face of adverse conditions. Upon my return to the United States, I served with community care agencies in Colorado learning that only through careful collaboration can all of our care needs be met. Most importantly though, I live the life of a parent of a son with multiple disabilities who requires my love and support 24 hours a day.
When my son Austin was born in 1990, my love for him was as profound and deep as that of any parent. Upon learning that he was born with multiple severe disabilities, I was confronted with the reality that he would forever require the support and encouragement of others. Others who would likely not understand his needs and how to meet them with the same degree of skill, compassion and love that my wife and I provide. I was fearful that my son may not experience the life I dreamt for him.
Rather than being discouraged I was motivated to find a way to make sure his needs were always met with the highest degree of quality and expertise. Drawing upon my many diverse experiences in the field of caregiving, I poured myself into learning as much as I could about the comprehensive care industry. In addition to researching fervently about the issue, I talked to other parents, specialists, teachers and care providers about how to best communicate an individual’s care needs.
I learned that effective caregiving requires a willingness to provide support and assistance in a variety of situations and to meet a variety of needs. I also learned that, without individualized instructions or guides to personalizing care to meet these needs, caregiving can be a very difficult service to provide, resulting in unnecessary anxiety, concern and reduction in the quality of care.
I realized that a Web-based information system that contains the best personalized caregiving policies, procedures and training would provide the most effective tool to ensure that my son would receive the highest quality of care if my wife and I were gone. CareGiver360® was the best legacy I could leave my son.