Private Caregiver or Home Care Agency?
Hiring a caregiver yourself means your family handles the screening, the schedule and the cover for days off. With an agency, those jobs are ours, and a Care Manager keeps you posted.
Registration HCA.0002450 Registry verified active
An agency has a state registration you can look up. A private caregiver is someone you get to know through interviews and reference calls. Either can work well, and the question is who does the arranging.
With a home care agency like Endurance Home Care, we screen and choose the caregiver, write a backup plan into the care plan and have a Care Manager keep you posted, while hiring privately means your family takes on those jobs yourselves. Endurance Home Care holds Connecticut Homemaker Companion Agency registration HCA.0002450, registry verified as active, and you can look it up before anybody signs anything.
Four questions that decide it
Either way, you end up with a caregiver in the house. The difference is who does the work around them: checking backgrounds, building the schedule, covering a sick day and staying in touch as things change. When you hire privately, your family does that work. With an agency, we do.
Who screens?
Background checks, reference checks and verification of qualifications, done before the first shift.
Who schedules?
Building the week, and changing it when an appointment moves or needs change.
Who covers?
Days off, holidays and the morning someone is unwell. A plan for cover is what makes the arrangement dependable.
Who keeps in touch?
The person you call when something needs to change, and who checks in on how things are going.
If you’re still getting a feel for live-in care itself, the live-in care guide covers what it looks like from day to day.
What an agency handles, and what you’d handle yourself
At Endurance, a registered nurse visits at home and writes the care plan with your family. We choose a caregiver for your parent and introduce them before the first visit, and if it isn’t working, we find someone else. Our caregivers have an orientation before their first shift and training every month, and that training includes disease state education, so a caregiver arrives already understanding the household. You can ask to meet more than one caregiver before care starts.
With an agency
What we handle
- Screening
- Background checks, reference checks and verification of qualifications before anyone is hired.
- Training
- Care Professional training that includes disease state education, so a caregiver arrives prepared for the household instead of learning it from the family.
- Matching
- A caregiver chosen for your parent and introduced before the first visit. One family wrote that the agency “allowed us to interview multiple people.”
- Cover
- An absence is ours to solve, on the day it happens. A backup plan is written into the care plan, and a second caregiver covers a live-in caregiver's days off.
- Keeping in touch
- A Care Manager who keeps your family updated and reviews the plan with you as needs change.
Hiring privately
What your family handles
- Screening
- Yours to arrange: references, background checks and verifying qualifications before a first shift.
- Employment
- Who is the employer, and who handles payroll and taxes, are questions to settle first. An accountant can help.
- Scheduling
- Yours to build, and to rebuild when something changes.
- Cover
- Yours to arrange for days off, holidays and sick days.
Hiring privately can work well, and it does mean taking on these jobs yourself. If you’re weighing the two, see how much a live-in caregiver costs for what goes into the cost of care through an agency.
It’s worth knowing who you’ll call on the morning a caregiver can’t come.
Ask who handles the training, the insurance and the early call when a caregiver is out sick.
With a private hire, that call usually falls to the family. With Endurance, the backup plan is already written into the care plan, and your Care Manager keeps you posted. Done properly it is invisible, which is what one family wrote: “Whenever we need anything they have a solution.”
Someone to call when things change
With an agency, you’re not managing the arrangement on your own. Your Care Manager keeps you updated and adjusts the plan when needs change, and our Care Coordinator looks after the schedule and the caregiver match. Here the owners take the first meeting themselves, and one family account of that first contact reads: the owner made everything easy from the very first call.
If your household needs someone there overnight or around the clock, there are a few ways to arrange it: live-in care, overnight care or 24-hour care, and each can be companion care or personal care. We provide personal care in Connecticut and New Jersey. In New York we provide companion care, by the hour, overnight, live-in or around the clock. When you’re ready, talk to our team about live-in care.
Check before you hire
Whichever way you go, a few minutes of checking is worth it, and you’re welcome to check us the same way.
Ask for the registration number
A Connecticut homemaker-companion agency has a state registration number and can give it to you on the first call. Ours is HCA.0002450.
Look it up yourself
Search it in the Connecticut public registry, so you're not relying on the agency's word alone.
Check that it's active
A number and a current registration are two different things, so check the status as well.
For a private caregiver, call the references
There's no registry entry for an individual, so reference calls and background checks do that job. Take the time to make them.
Worth knowing while you compare: neither option is Medicare home health. That benefit has to be ordered by a health care provider and delivered by a Medicare certified home health agency, and it doesn’t pay for homemaker services such as shopping and cleaning. Most long term care is daily-living, and Medicare and most health insurance, including Medigap, don’t pay for it. Endurance is private pay, and families with long-term care insurance can use it, with our help on the policy paperwork. If the plan is live-in, the practical setup matters too: live-in caregiver requirements at home.
Questions families ask about hiring
Private caregiver for elderly parents: agency or direct hire?
Both can work. When you hire a caregiver directly, your family handles the screening, the schedule, cover for sick days and days off, and the employer side, such as payroll. With an agency, those jobs are ours. Endurance Home Care runs background and reference checks, chooses the caregiver for your parent and introduces them before the first visit, writes a backup plan into the care plan, and has a Care Manager keep you posted as needs change. Endurance Home Care, Connecticut Homemaker Companion Agency Registration HCA.0002450, trains its Care Professionals, including disease state education, matches on needs and personality, and families can ask to meet more than one candidate before care starts.
What should I ask before hiring a private caregiver directly?
Ask who will be the employer, who handles payroll and taxes, and who checks references and verifies qualifications. Ask who covers a sick day or a holiday, and who looks in on how things are going over time. An accountant can help with the employer questions. With a registered agency, those answers sit with the agency, and you can look up the agency's registration with the state.
What happens if the caregiver does not show up?
With a private hire, finding someone to cover falls to your family. With Endurance, a backup plan is written into the care plan, and for live-in care a second caregiver covers the main caregiver's days off, so your family knows who is coming. Your Care Manager keeps you posted if anything changes. One family wrote: 'Whenever we need anything they have a solution.'
Talk it through with us
Tell us what your family needs, and we’ll explain how we’d arrange care, from choosing the caregiver to covering days off. The first conversation is free, and nothing starts until you say so. Live-in care across Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, and around the clock care in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut’s Fairfield and New Haven counties, from an agency licensed in Connecticut and New Jersey.