Helping families connect with the right caregivers to find much needed care faster.
Just Like Mom Care was started to help families find care for their loved one with special needs, with a disability, with unique needs or for those that require additional help.
Tamra Logan, Founder
I started Just Like Mom Care to help families like mine find respite care faster. After looking for care and respite help for the past 16 years primarily for my daughter with special needs, I finally decided it was time. I’d been using other care search sites and have had some luck with them but it was always so time-consuming and it only added to my already really full plate. I knew that I and others needed a tool to help refine our search when juggling kids, life, work, and having a child with lots of extra needs.
So over many weekends and late nights to get this site built, Just Like Mom is now here to help families connect with the caregivers they are looking for and caregivers find the families they would like to work for.
More About Us
Caring for a loved one living with special needs or a disability, who’s aging, or ill can be rewarding — but it’s also exhausting. Between appointments, medications, household chores, and taking care of other family members, many family caregivers end up feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and isolated.
We are here to help families or family caregivers find the much needed respite care they need so they can get a break. By building a community centered around special needs and disability care, we are creating connections and changing lives.
The Problem We Are Solving
Finding accessible respite care services and qualified providers remains a significant challenge for families of children and adults with disabilities. The process is often hindered by a scarcity of dedicated platforms to connect with caregivers, insufficient numbers of respite care centers, and long waitlists when a potential option is found.
Key issues and considerations include:
Challenges in Finding Care
- Difficulty Locating Providers: There is no centralized, dedicated hub to easily find qualified disability caregivers or respite providers. Respite care is an atypical service that is difficult to locate through general searches.
- Limited Capacity: Existing centers often have extensive waitlists or cannot accommodate individuals with specific needs, especially those requiring intensive 1:1 or 1:2 care ratios, which increases costs for agencies.
- Aging Caregivers: As children with disabilities age into adulthood, finding appropriate adult respite care becomes even more difficult. Many aging parents lack the energy and resources to tirelessly search for new care options.
Funding and Financial Considerations
- Cost as a Major Factor: Respite care can be expensive. To alleviate this burden, many programs offer financial assistance through “respite dollars” to families who already face higher-than-average costs.
- Funding Access: The process for accessing these funds varies by state, typically managed through Medicaid waiver programs or other support organizations. However, families still struggle to find actual providers who accept these funding sources
What we are doing
Just Like Mom Care serves as a platform to facilitate direct connections between families in need of care and potential caregivers. We also aim to educate caregivers on the fundamentals of respite care. A key feature of the service is allowing families to include details of their current respite agency on their profiles. This ensures that prospective caregivers are informed upfront about the existing agency relationship. Interested caregivers can then connect with the family, get onboarded by the specified respite agency, and receive payment through that agency, thereby eliminating out-of-pocket costs for the family.
How are we different from other care search sites?
About the name
While I was trying to think of a name that meant all the things into one, I remembered that my sister had the name Just Like Mom when she ran a small nanny company many years ago so I asked her if it was ok to use it. Her answer, “I love it, yay! Makes me happy too”.
To my sweet sister who has always been such a huge supporter in my life and has given Birkley so much love and has gone out of her way I don’t know how many times to be there for special moments, thank you!
More about our story
Tamra has a history or creating products out of a need. With a passion for helping her daughter live better, she started creating products soon after her daughter was born with the most recent being Skneeks. Skneeks were knee sneakers or tear resistant knee pads for kids and adults who walk on their knees and although these are no longer being sold, she hopes to bring them back one day because she still gets requests weekly. Birkley was born with CMV causing cerebral palsy, developmental delay, and profound hearing loss and while it hasn’t been easy, finding the right support to get through the tough times was always a priority.
“We as parents and caregivers always need a moment to take time for ourselves and why I felt the need to switch gears. We need to create more awareness in the respite space within the disability community and I hope to do just that.”
More on Birkley
Birkley’s first steps on Good Morning America
You can also follow Birkley on instagram @special_living_today