Helping Families Navigate Home Care in Baltimore and the DC Metro Area: Chris Morris of A Plus Personal Home Care

Finding the right home care provider is about more than finding someone who can help with daily tasks.

Families also need to know how care gets paid for, who will be coming into their loved one's home, and whether a caregiver can meet a specific cultural or language need.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN sat down with Chris Morris of A Plus Personal Home Care, which serves families across the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas from offices in Gaithersburg and Pikesville, Maryland.

Most of their clients receive personal care or companion care at home, with help across bathing and hygiene, dressing, toileting, meals, light housekeeping, laundry, mobility and medication reminders.

When a caregiver spends eight, twelve or sixteen hours a day with someone, Chris says the match matters as much as the experience. The goal is a partner in that person's care, not someone working through a checklist.

Some of what the conversation covered:

• Whether a family member can be paid to provide care in Maryland, and the screening that still applies when they do
• The payment sources families actually use, including Maryland Medical Assistance, private pay, veterans' benefits and long-term care insurance
• How the agency deals with long-term care carriers directly and submits invoices on a family's behalf
• Why Chris, a veteran himself, understands how hard the veterans' benefit system can be to navigate
• Caregivers who speak Korean, Chinese languages, Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek and other Eastern European languages, and what that changes for an older adult trying to explain what they need

The theme Chris came back to was partnership: with clients, with families, and with the other organizations helping people stay safe at home.

For families in Baltimore, Gaithersburg, Washington, D.C. and the surrounding Maryland communities, the hardest part is often just knowing where to begin.