Your mother moved to Florida for the weather and the pool. Now she is in a villa at Esplanade at Wiregrass Ranch, or in a house she has owned since the 1990s in Meadow Pointe, you are in another state or on the other side of Tampa, and the phone calls have started to include small things. She is not cooking much. The laundry piles up. She has not been to the clubhouse in a month. She says she is fine, and she probably is. You would still like someone to be there a few afternoons a week.
Florida sorts in-home help into two categories, and the category you need decides who you can hire, what they may do, and what it costs. Here is the plain version, written for families.
The two categories
Florida separates non-medical companion and homemaker services from medical care delivered in the home. Companion and homemaker providers register with the Agency for Health Care Administration under Florida Statute 400.509. Medical care at home is a different track with a different license, and the two do not overlap.
Here is the boundary: hands-on personal care such as bathing, dressing, transfers or medication administration is home health work that requires a licensed agency, and we will tell you so. If that is what your parent needs, we are not the right call, and we will say it on the phone rather than let you find out later.
Everything below is the other category, the one we work in.
What companion and homemaker care covers
- Companionship. Company and conversation. Sitting on the lanai, a hand of cards, a walk to the mailbox, somebody to talk to at lunch.
- Meal planning and preparation. Working out what the week's meals are, shopping for them, and cooking and serving them. For a parent who has stopped cooking for one, this is often the single biggest change.
- Light housekeeping. Dishes, counters, a bathroom wipe-down, floors, beds, the kitchen after cooking.
- Laundry. Washed, dried, folded, and put away.
- Shopping and errand assistance. The grocery run, the pharmacy pickup, the dry cleaning, the return to the store at Wiregrass.
- Accompaniment to appointments and outings. We go along and sit through the waiting room, the haircut, or the lunch out. We do not drive your parent in our car, so the ride is a family member, a neighbor, or a car service, and we ride along or meet there.
- Respite for family caregivers. If you are the one doing all of the above, a standing block of hours gives you that time back.
That list is the whole job. A parent who has eaten a real lunch, has a clean kitchen and has talked to someone is in better shape at the end of the week than a parent who has not.
What it looks like on a Tuesday
Here is what a Tuesday afternoon looks like. We arrive around 1 p.m. with the groceries we agreed on with your mother by text the day before. Lunch gets cooked and eaten together, at the table, with the television off. A load of laundry runs while the kitchen gets wiped down. The pharmacy bag from the morning errand goes on the counter for her to manage. Then there is time for the part of the visit she looks forward to, which might be a card game, a walk to the mailbox at her pace, or a conversation about the neighbors. Before we leave, you get a short message about how the afternoon went and whether anything looked different from last week.
If a need moves across the line described above, we will say so and help you look for a licensed agency, and we will not pretend the line is not there.
Inside a 55+ community
Esplanade at Wiregrass Ranch, a 55+ community in Wesley Chapel, Florida, has a guarded entry. That means we cannot simply drive to your parent's door. The resident adds guests to a list, and the gatehouse admits people from it. Before the first visit, your parent or you will need to put our name on that list, using whatever procedure the gatehouse uses. The clubhouse, pool, and fitness areas are for residents, so if your parent wants company at the pool, that is her fob and her community's guest rule, not ours.
Then there are the older communities where people have simply stayed. Northwood's district dates to 1995. Lexington Oaks grew up around its golf course. Meadow Pointe's earliest villages are among the oldest in Wesley Chapel. Many original owners are still in those houses, in neighborhoods that were built for young families and now have a lot of quiet afternoons. Most of those communities have no gate at all, so the logistics are easier, and the isolation can be worse.
What it costs
Companion and homemaker visits are $28 an hour with a 3-hour minimum. An overnight is $200, from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
The 3-hour minimum is on purpose. An hour is enough to drop off groceries. Three hours is enough to shop, cook lunch, eat it together, run a load of laundry, wipe down the kitchen, and still have time for the conversation that was the point of the visit. Two afternoons a week comes to $168. A standing weekday block, Monday through Friday, is $420.
An overnight is for the stretch when a family member who normally stays over needs to sleep in their own bed, or when your parent simply does not want to be alone in the house for a night. Someone is in the house through the evening, through the night, and through breakfast.
What to ask any provider
- Are you registered with AHCA as a companion and homemaker provider, and what is your registration number? Florida requires that number in the provider's advertising.
- Will it be the same person each time, and can my parent meet them first?
- What exactly will you do and not do, in writing, before the first visit?
- How will you tell me what happened during a visit?
- What happens when a need crosses the line into medical care?
On the first question: Florida requires companion and homemaker providers to register with AHCA and to publish the registration number in their advertising. Ours will appear on this site as soon as it is issued.
How to start
The sensible way to start is small. A single afternoon a week to cook and talk. A second afternoon if the first one works. A grocery run on the off days. The starting point is a free meet and greet at your parent's home, with your parent in the room, because she is the one who has to want us there. We are just down Bruce B. Downs in New Tampa, and Esplanade, Meadow Pointe, Northwood, and Lexington Oaks are all a short drive up the road.