YOUR ADVISOR
Lizette Cloete, OTR/L
Lizette Cloete is the advisor behind DigniCare™ by Design. She has worked in adult occupational therapy and rehabilitation since 1993, across physical rehabilitation, mental health, cognition, and dementia, and has been a family caregiver herself since 1990.
Her professional experience taught her to look beyond a diagnosis or isolated problem to how a person actually functions within the life, relationships, environment, responsibilities, and limits around them. Her own caregiving—and years of working directly with other caregivers—showed her something further: even substantial knowledge and good professional guidance may not be enough to determine what the whole caregiving situation now requires.
That work became what she now calls Caregiving System Advising
Why She Sees Caregiving Differently
For years, I believed that knowledge should make caregiving easier.
By the time my father was hospitalized near the end of COVID and our family became his hands-on caregivers, I had decades of experience as an occupational therapist. I understood illness, safety, function, cognition, and care. I had the practical skills. The caregiving tasks themselves were not what I could not manage. What I could not determine was what all of that knowledge meant within the life we actually had.
My father’s needs and preferences mattered. So did my marriage, work, church, finances, family history, the responsibilities different people were carrying, the authority we did and did not have, our limits, and what we believed faithful caregiving required. Knowing what might help my father did not tell us how all of those realities should fit together.
For a time, moving closer to my parents was the arrangement that worked. After my mother died and my father could no longer live alone, the arrangement had to change again. Later, changing finances required another reorganization. Those choices were right for our particular family at those particular times. They are not a model for what another family should do.
What changed my understanding of caregiving was realizing that knowledge could give me facts without telling me their meaning, priority, or order within the actual caregiving situation. That was the work I had not known how to name.
What I Saw Repeated in Other Caregiving Situations
What I recognized in my own family did not stay there. As I continued working with caregivers one-to-one, in groups, through Ask the Dementia Coach, workshops, assessments, church and community conversations, and other caregiver-facing work, the same kind of gap kept appearing.
The situations themselves were different. One caregiver might be trying to make sense of a professional recommendation. Another might be carrying responsibility without the authority to act. Another might have several reasonable needs, family obligations, resources, and limits that no longer fit together. Sometimes the issue was large and consequential. Sometimes it was a small recurring problem that kept reopening.
Again and again, caregivers brought substantial information, professional input, resources, family history, preferences, responsibilities, and constraints—and still needed help determining:
“They might seem like small things…”
Over time, the work became clearer. It was not simply education, decision support, coordination, or another form of caregiving coaching. It was the work of interpreting the actual caregiving situation, distinguishing what belonged where, and helping determine how the caregiving system needed to be organized, reorganized, or ordered.
What I Bring to the Advisory Work
My professional formation began in occupational therapy. I earned my Bachelor of Occupational Therapy from the University of Pretoria in 1992 and have practiced in adult rehabilitation since 1993. I remain a licensed occupational therapist in South Carolina.
Over the course of that work, I have practiced across skilled nursing, acute care, long-term acute care, home health, outpatient care, mental health, cognition, and dementia. That breadth matters because caregiving problems rarely stay neatly inside one diagnosis or one professional setting. I have spent decades watching what happens when health, cognition, function, environment, family life, care requirements, resources, and limitations meet in the life a person is actually living.
I also pursued specialized training over the years in dementia care and life care planning. Some of that training included certifications I no longer maintain, so I do not present them as current credentials. What remains important is what that training added to my thinking—particularly learning to look beyond the immediate problem, consider how needs may develop over time, and understand how one change can affect what will be required elsewhere.
And I bring something professional training could not give me. Alongside that professional work, I have lived inside family caregiving for decades. I know caregiving from the professional side, but I also know what it is to live inside family responsibility over years as circumstances, relationships, capacity, dependency, and arrangements change.
That does not mean my caregiving experience tells me what another family should do. It means I understand the difference between knowing about caregiving from the outside and having to determine what faithfulness requires from inside an actual caregiving situation.
When You Bring Me the Whole Situation
You do not have to arrive with the problem neatly organized. You may bring me five things that happened this week, what the doctor said, what your sister thinks, something you are worried might happen next, and three other questions you are not sure even belong together.
My first job is to understand enough of the context to determine what actually matters. Not every piece of information has the same weight. Not every question needs an answer now. A professional recommendation may be important without settling the whole caregiving response. Something that feels urgent may need to wait while another issue is addressed first.
I listen for what is happening underneath everything you are telling me: what requires attention now, what belongs somewhere else, what is constrained by the reality you are living in, and what does not need to be solved yet. Your emotions are part of that reality, and I will not ignore them. But I also will not leave you with validation when what you need is help determining what to do.
When the evidence is sufficient, I will give you a clear recommendation and help put the next steps in the right order. If information is genuinely missing, we determine what needs to be learned or who needs to answer that question. If you already know enough, I will not give you more education simply because more information is available.
The goal is that you leave with less to hold in your head—not because every part of the caregiving situation has been solved, but because you are clearer about what matters now, what comes first, what can wait, and what does not need to be decided yet.
The Kind of Trust This Relationship Requires
If you work with me, I will give you my judgment. I will not simply reflect your options back to you or tell you that every possible choice is equally wise. When the evidence supports a recommendation, I will make one. And I will not tell you something is a good decision simply because it is the decision you want to make. That does not mean I make the decision for you.
My Christian worldview governs how I understand the caregiving situation: the dignity of the person created in the image of God, the truth of what is actually happening, the responsibilities and authority different people hold, the relationships and stations God has given them, the limits that are real, and what faithful stewardship requires.
Professional expertise matters. A physician, therapist, attorney, financial professional, pastor, or other person may appropriately answer questions that belong to that role. I do not replace them, and I do not take over the role of your pastor or your church. My work is to help you understand how those realities bear on the caregiving situation you are actually living.
I will tell you when I do not know something. If another professional determination is genuinely needed, I will tell you that too. And if you decide differently from the recommendation I give you, the decision remains yours. I do not require agreement or obedience in order to continue advising you. We work with the reality that actually exists—including the decisions you have made—and determine what faithfulness requires from there.
Trusting me as your advisor does not mean handing your responsibility over to me. It means you can expect me to tell you what I actually see, make a clear recommendation when the evidence supports one, respect the authority that belongs elsewhere, and help you determine what is actually yours to carry.
You Do Not Have to Take My Word for It
Everything on this page is still, ultimately, me telling you who I am, how I came to this work, and how I advise. You should not have to rely on my account alone.
There is also evidence outside what I say about myself—through the people and organizations that have invited me to teach, speak, and contribute; through the work others have observed; and through caregivers who have experienced the advising itself. That evidence belongs in its own place.