Salve is independently owned, BCCPA-member, BC HCP-licensed, and small on purpose. Maria Nena Solas (who goes by Nena) started Salve in 2011 after enough years caring for her own people, and other people's, that she knew what she wanted home care to feel like, and what she didn't.
Nena started Salve in 2011 because home care, at the time, wasn't reliably there for the families who needed it. She'd seen the gap firsthand. After decades in nursing, she wanted to bring the same patience to home care that she'd brought to operating rooms and psychiatric wards: each home treated as a home, not a tile on a schedule. Salve started small (a few caregivers, a handful of clients) and has grown around that posture rather than away from it.
Salve is Filipino-Canadian-led, by a team who brought into the work the values that shaped them: respect for elders, a steady patience around older people, and the warmth that makes care feel like a household more than a service. It isn't the headline of who we are; our priority is professionalism, training, and quality of care. But it's part of why this work feels right to us, and worth saying out loud.
Founder & CEO
Maria Nena Solas
Nena has been in healthcare since 1978: a long career across the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. Twenty-two years in the operating room, twenty-five in psychiatric nursing. After moving to Vancouver, she continued in mental health, including roles within Vancouver Coastal Health. Several years as a home support worker gave her a firsthand sense of what care looks like in a home. She's also a registered midwife. That range is what shaped Salve's posture: practical and unhurried.
Client Care & Operations Manager, Registered Nurse
Ezekiel Deveras
Ezekiel is a Registered Nurse based in Vancouver, with a clinical background in dialysis nursing: patient assessment, care planning, and the close, ongoing work complex cases require. At Salve he coordinates care and operations, making sure clients and caregivers are well-supported and the day-to-day work runs the way the care plan said it would.
Scheduling Coordinator
Milyn Dalao
Milyn coordinates scheduling at Salve: matching caregivers to clients and keeping the week's care plans aligned as families' needs change. She came to this work indirectly, starting with an accounting foundation, then a Team Leader role in a UK residential home, and over a decade in Canadian group homes and private care since. It's the kind of operational sense that holds a small care team together, the work that's invisible when it's done well.
Administrative Assistant
Ma. Lorena Plondaya
Lorena supports day-to-day administration at Salve, the office work that keeps schedules, records, and client communication moving the way they should.
Beyond the leadership team, Salve has registered nurses on staff who support care planning, clinical oversight, and the more complex cases.
Registered Nurse, Care Coordinator
Roxanne Real
Roxanne came to Canada in 2017 as an internationally educated nurse and joined Salve in 2018 as a Health Care Aide while she worked toward her Canadian RN license. From there she became Salve's Care Coordinator, the role she still holds today alongside her RN work at a long-term care facility. Along the way she's helped other internationally educated nurses navigate the same transition she did, supporting newly hired staff through their first roles in Canadian healthcare. Caring for seniors started as a job and became something more personal. Every elderly client reminds her of her grandparents, whom she misses dearly.
Registered Nurse, Care Planning & Clinical Oversight
Jacyn Mae Refamonte
Jacyn has been with Salve since 2019, starting as a home support worker while she finished her nursing degree and staying on after her Canadian RN license came through in 2022. Before Canada, she spent four years in intensive care in the Philippines and a year doing research nursing at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. Since licensing she's worked emergency at Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital in Fredericton, completed Critical Care training at UNB, and earned TNCC and ENPC certifications. She also takes travel-nursing contracts in Northern BC and the Yukon, where remote communities have less around them. Off shift she hikes at minus-forty, dances when she's home in Vancouver, and recently learned to knit mittens from the elders up north.
For scheduling and day-to-day care questions, call the office line at 778-953-3134, answered live 8am–6pm. For anything urgent, call 604-783-9215 any time (it's the line to use if the office lines don't pick up), or email admin@salvehealthcare.ca.
Or read about the caregivers themselves.