This story was updated with some clarifications on April 30.
For Jessica and Kelly Howard, growing up as young girls in Trumbull meant spending time at work with their mother Catherine, owner of Griswold Home Care of Stratford.
Cathy Howard and her mother Frances Malafronte brought the Griswold name into Connecticut in 1991 as an outgrowth of her own struggle to find quality and affordable care for her own grandfather. A hospice volunteer, Catherine decided to open a Connecticut franchise created by Jean Griswold in 1982.
Some 32 years later the two sisters took a circuitous route to owning their own Griswold franchise, which included their mother’s original Stratford office. They returned from college – Kelly went to Philadelphia University and Jessica attended Eastern Connecticut State University.
Then they purchased the Connecticut franchise from Leslie Mills of New Haven two years ago. And now they operate three offices: besides Stratford, two others in Bethel and Hamden serving about 100 clients with nine office workers and 130 full-time and part-time caregivers.
As a way of leaving their stamp on their Griswold franchise, they worked closely with the home care company’s Philadelphia corporate office. That included going high-tech by using AI to provide some around-the-clock coverage for clients who can’t afford live-in caregivers.
“We were trying to think outside the box,” said Jessica, 34. “We had clients who were looking for 24-hour service but didn’t have the money for it. Obviously, an AI system around the clock is not going to take the place of a caregiver, but we were trying something to bridge the gap to provide the best care possible.”
About six months ago they purchased some Sensi monitors to place in clients’ homes after meeting a representative from the company at a regular Griswold meeting.
“It is an audio-based system,” Kelly said. “It captures any health or care-related sounds, keywords, or phrases. It could notify us of different things, such as falls, UTIs, and medication mismanagement.”
She described how the AI device gets a baseline for a client so as to compare to any results it picks up when a caregiver is not present.
“We had a client who went to the bathroom once at night,” she added. “One night she went to the bathroom eight times and the office staff was made aware of this change because they had a Sensi pod in the bathroom and it hears the flush of the toilet. It also heard her say, ‘Ouch, ouch, it’s burning.’ They were alerted the next morning of these changes.”
The device was able to send Griswold an alert to let her family know to get a urinalysis in the morning and meet with her primary physician way sooner than one would have known.
One of Griswold’s clients in Connecticut described how the Sensi device helped out her mother. “I was with her the day she fell right behind me over her chair and flattened a TV stand,” the client’s daughter said. “She just tipped over and moments afterwards I got a call from Shari who said Sensi AI had picked up that her mom may have fallen. Of course, I was right there and had helped her up making sure she was not hurt.
“But how remarkable that this AI software was able to detect that fall. If I had not been there, I could have gotten help to her because the relay from Griswold was so quick.”
Later, Sensi AI reported that the client’s mom was at risk for falling because of several things that had recently been picked up – she was unstable, dehydrated, and very tired.
The way the system works is that it has its own router that uses any nearby cell phone network, which means it doesn’t require WiFi.
Griswold awarded the Howard sisters its Innovation Award for 2025 for bringing AI to home care in Connecticut.
“As the first in Connecticut to implement AI in non-medical home care, Jessica and Kelly are pioneering a new standard for the industry,” according to a Griswold press release. “Through their use of Sensi AI, they’re helping the office staff detect falls, medication errors, and early signs of health concerns.”
What Griswold offers
Jessica and Kelly Howard describe what they do in the following buckets:
- Personal care – showering, changing, toileting
- Homemaking – light housekeeping
- Companionship – assisting with reading, watching a show, taking them to a show
- Meal prep and transportation
“We provide homemaking companionship, transportation, meal preparation, anything under those umbrellas.
We both went to college and were going to go in different fields. Jessica started working in the office after returning. Before I graduated from college in Philadelphia, I worked at the corporate office there. I stayed a couple of years there doing their event planning. So, when I went back home it was a natural step for me to join. We both saw how great a company Griswold was through our mother and what she was doing for the community helping people, not just our clients but giving our caregivers a living wage.
“I really do love our clients and their families and the bond they make with their caregivers,” Kelly said. “It is absolutely amazing to help people stay where they live up until the day that they pass. We got a thank you card in the mail from a family saying how amazing our caregivers were to their dad. For me, that makes it all worth it.”
Jessica describes how important their business is to the families of their clients.
“They have never had a caregiver before,” she said. “They are typically the caretakers of their family. Now they are the ones needing care. It’s a significant turn of events for them. It’s really rewarding to find that balance of care for our clients.”
