The questions families ask us at eleven at night

It depends on how many hours a week you need and what those hours involve, so an honest figure is not something we can put on a web page. What we can promise is that the price we quote is the price you pay, and that the assessment which produces that price is free. You get a real number once we know what the week actually looks like. For what it is worth, most families we work with land somewhere between 10 and 40 hours a week.

Medicaid, yes, for families who qualify, and we serve Medicaid families and private pay families exactly the same way. Medicare is not one of the routes families use to pay us. The four we work with are private pay, Medicaid, long-term care insurance, and Veterans benefits for those who qualify. Bring whatever policy or paperwork you already have to the assessment and we will tell you plainly which of those applies to you, and what your options are if the answer is none of them.

Home health is the term for care that a licensed health professional provides in the home, and it is usually arranged through a doctor. Praise Homecare is not that. We are a non-medical home care agency: bathing, dressing, grooming, mobility and transfers, meals, laundry, errands, company, memory support, and medication reminders only, not administration. Plenty of families have both at once and it works well. We take the hours and the ordinary life, and we work alongside whatever health care team is already involved.

Yes. Nothing about her health care changes when we start, because we are not a part of it. She keeps her doctor, her pharmacy and every appointment she already has. What changes is that somebody can get her there, sit with her, help her keep track of what was said, and tell you about it afterwards. That last part is usually the job that had quietly become yours, on your lunch break, from three hours away.

Yes, all three, and the phone is answered on all three as well. Care runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including nights, weekends and holidays. Short-term, overnight, weekend, holiday and around-the-clock cover are all available. Holidays are the one thing worth telling us about as far ahead as you can manage, so the cover is arranged properly rather than improvised in the last week of December.

The care plan is reviewed as things change rather than written once and filed. Needs move in both directions: after a hospital stay you might want more hours for a few weeks and fewer afterwards. Tell us what you are seeing, and expect to hear from us too, because caregivers are asked to flag a change before it turns into a crisis. Hours can go up, come down, or change shape entirely, and that conversation never costs you anything.