Your Eldercare Consultants is a team of caring, professional geriatric care managers with advanced degrees in social work and training in Gerontology.
A leading provider of care management for older adults and their families for over two decades, we have the expertise to help families understand and plan for many changes that accompany aging.
Joan Richman Ente, A.M., L.C.S.W., Manager of Your Eldercare Consultants
BA, Oberlin College; AM, University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration
Joan leads CJE SeniorLife’s Your Eldercare Consultants team with more than 25 years of experience in social work, including aging, mental health, family counseling, and staff development and training. Joan values a family’s stories, complex relationships and themes that recur across the generations to inform her practice. She has a keen interest in the management of Parkinson’s Disease and other neurodegenerative cognitive disorders. Joan sees resilience as a central element in positive aging, and believes that successful services build on individual and family strengths. Joan uses encouragement, pragmatism, resourcefulness and imagination – as well as her deep network of connections to leading lights in Chicago’s Jewish community, health care systems, and service providers – to come up with creative solutions for families. A natural communicator, Joan speaks regularly about aging issues to business, community and professional groups, and has written a monthly column for the Chicago Jewish News and numerous articles for CJE’s LIFE Magazine. Joan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and holds an A.M. from University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and a B.A. from Oberlin College. In her spare time, Joan is an avid Chicago Cubs fan. She thanks the baseball gods for the multiple blessings of wonderful adult children, strength training, and the Cubs’ 2016 season..
Lauren Vourvoulias, Compliance Associate
Lauren anchors the Your Eldercare Consultants, Counseling and CJE Care Management teams and serves not only as a hub for information and resources within Your Eldercare Consultants, but also a conduit between multiple internal and external teams and organizations. Lauren excels in organization, technology, communication and office management, and has more than 10 years of experience working with adult and aging populations. She has a keen sensitivity and perspective on the urgency and ever-changing needs of our clients thanks to her past hands-on experience as a Certified Nursing Assistant across diverse populations and settings in Michigan. Lauren has since taken on additional responsibilities overseeing care coordination and management at a Chicago-area home care services agency for community-dwelling older adults, and eventually, as a Care Coordinator at CJE SeniorLife. Today, Lauren helps ensure multiple CJE SeniorLife teams are equipped to provide superior quality service to our clients. Away from the office, Lauren enjoys spending time with her husband, Michael, their ever growing menagerie of pets, as well as traveling, cooking, baking, gardening, and Chicago sports.
Susan Swanson, LCSW Geriatric Care Manager
Susan is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and holds an A.M. from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and a Bachelors of Science in Psychology from Loyola University Chicago. She has more than 20 years of experience working with older adults, and her expertise in mental health, aging and family dynamics make her an invaluable asset to CJE Senior Life’s Your Eldercare Consultants team. Throughout her career at CJE, Susan has been involved in a variety of programs including counseling, care management, clinical supervision, and community and professional education. In addition, she was instrumental in developing and implementing various CJE programs such as the managed community care program and home health. Susan has a post-graduate degree from The Center for Family Consultation, where she delved into social work practice from a family systems’ perspective. She believes that each person needs to be understood in terms of their own self interacting in a larger system and that every individual has a unique story to tell. In the recounting of personal history, it is paramount to identify and nurture a person’s strengths and inner resources. The goal is to help each individual reach their optimal level of functioning and enjoy the best possible, enriched quality of late life. Susan is known to her CJE colleagues for her extraordinary kindness, special healing touch, sense of humor and dogged persistence. Outside the office, Susan enjoys her time with family, reading, cooking and gardening.
Rich Buino, MSW, Geriatric Care Manager
Rich Buino, a native of Chicago’s North Shore, holds a Masters in Social Work from University of Illinois at Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from DePauw University. Rich was recruited to CJE SeniorLife’s Your Eldercare Consultants team in 2019 after serving on CJE SeniorLife’s Care Management and Counseling teams. Rich takes a holistic approach to promoting older adults’ autonomy and wellbeing, using clinical skills gained from experience in individual psychotherapy, support groups, and clinical case management, as well as academic training in integrated behavioral health systems and evidence-based practices. Prior to studies in social work, Rich worked at a global consumer goods company for 17 years in the field of public relations and corporate communications, gaining transferrable skills in relationship building, interviewing, crisis management, and cultural humility. In his spare time, Rich enjoys cycling, running, reading, and exploring new cultures through travel and language learning.