Hospice Support Care in East Lyme, CT
Non-medical hospice support — homemaker-companion services that complement hospice nursing during a parent's final months at home.
No sales pressure. We'll tell you straight if we're not a fit.
The night the hospice nurse from Lawrence + Memorial called to say your father was transitioning faster than expected, you were already in the car driving down Route 156 toward his house near Niantic Bay. You walked in and realized you couldn’t do the next few days alone. That moment, when the weight of it all lands at once, is exactly when families in East Lyme reach out to us. We’re here to sit beside you through it, quietly, steadily, for as long as you need.
Hospice Support Care means we work alongside the hospice nurses and medical team, not in place of them. Our role is to handle the day-to-day comfort needs: sitting with your family member so they’re never alone, assisting with personal hygiene, helping with repositioning, and keeping the home calm and clean. We follow the hospice care plan and communicate with the clinical team so nothing falls through the gaps.
For East Lyme families, this kind of support often becomes necessary after a transition home from Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, when the hospice nurse visits only a few hours a day and the rest of the time falls to family. We can be there for those remaining hours, whether that’s four hours in the afternoon or around the clock through the final days. Families throughout East Lyme, from the neighborhoods along the shore to the quieter inland roads near Flanders, have called us when they realized they needed steady hands beside them.
Because Private Duty Aides was founded by a working nurse, our approach to end-of-life support is grounded in clinical understanding, which means our caregivers are trained to recognize changes in comfort, to work respectfully with hospice teams, and to handle the physical realities of this stage without flinching. That matters more than it sounds when you’re in it.
Nurse-founded, and it shows. Our agency was started by a working nurse who watched families navigate end-of-life care at home and saw exactly what was missing: consistent, informed, non-medical presence that could hold the space between hospice visits. That’s what we built.
Specific to this kind of care. We don’t send a generic aide and hope for the best. Caregivers matched to hospice support cases have experience with comfort-focused routines, understand how to work alongside a hospice team, and know how to be present without being intrusive.
We stay reachable when things change. Hospice care shifts quickly, sometimes within hours. When something changes overnight or on a Sunday, you can reach us, and we’ll respond with a real answer and a plan.
We know East Lyme and this county. We’re familiar with the discharge process at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, the geography of New London County, and the particular way families here want their homes and their people treated.
How it works
**Call or email us, and we listen.** Tell us what’s happening. No intake forms, no pressure, just a real conversation about what your family needs right now.
**We match your caregiver carefully.** For hospice support specifically, we consider temperament, experience with end-of-life care, and how well they’ll fit with your family’s way of doing things.
**Care starts within 48 hours.** For urgent East Lyme families, we work to arrange same-day or next-morning support, especially after a hospital discharge or a sudden change in condition.
**We stay in contact throughout.** You get regular check-ins from us, not just from the caregiver. If something shifts, you call us and we respond, not a voicemail box.
Why families choose us
Every aide is trained and supervised through an RN’s lens — not just placed and forgotten.
Personality fit matters more than skill on paper. We match for temperament, pace, and patience.
No franchise rotation. You work with the people who run this agency — direct, accessible, accountable.
Most families are matched with a caregiver within 24 to 48 hours. When something shifts at home, we move quickly.
We build a daily structure around your parent’s rhythm — meals, walks, evenings — and protect it.
You hear from us, not just the aide. Updates on appetite, sleep, mood, mobility — the things that matter.
Every caregiver clears a multi-step screening — background check, reference checks, and an in-person interview with our RN founder — before they're ever placed in a home.
Why families trust us
Private Duty Aides is nurse-founded. Every caregiver clears a multi-step screening — a background check, reference checks, and an in-person interview with our RN founder — before they are ever placed in a home. You get the same consistent caregiver, matched by a nurse, not whoever happens to be available.
Common questions
On a typical day, a hospice support caregiver helps with personal comfort routines like bathing, oral care, and repositioning. They sit with your family member so no one is alone, assist with light meals or fluids when appropriate, and keep the environment calm and clean. They also communicate any changes in condition or comfort to you and, when needed, to the hospice nurse. The shape of each day follows what your family member needs, not a rigid checklist.
We aim to have care in place within 48 hours of your first call, and for families coming home from Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, we do everything we can to arrange same-day or next-morning support. Call us as soon as you know a discharge is coming and we'll start matching your caregiver immediately. Waiting until the day of discharge is fine too. We understand things move fast.
Private Duty Aides is a private-pay agency, which means we don't bill Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance. Families pay directly, which gives us the flexibility to arrange the specific hours and type of support you actually need rather than what a payer will authorize. Some long-term care insurance policies do reimburse for private-duty non-medical care, so it's worth checking your policy. We're happy to provide documentation that helps with that process.
A home health aide typically works within a Medicare-certified agency, follows a prescribed clinical plan, and focuses on skilled or post-acute needs. Our hospice support caregivers are non-medical, which means they focus entirely on comfort, presence, and daily living assistance rather than clinical tasks. They work alongside the hospice nurse and social worker, filling the hours when the medical team isn't there. Think of it as the human presence that keeps things steady between clinical visits.
Yes, and we take that seriously. Before we place anyone, we ask about your family member's personality, their preferences, what makes them comfortable, and what tends to make things harder. For end-of-life care especially, fit matters more than anything. If the first match isn't right, we'll make a change without making it a production. Getting it right is the whole point.
We maintain backup coverage and we notify you as early as possible if there's a scheduling change. We don't leave you to figure it out on your own. During hospice support, continuity matters, so we work hard to keep the same caregiver in place whenever we can. If a substitute is needed, we brief them thoroughly on your family member's preferences before they arrive.
All home care services in East Lyme
No sales pressure. We'll tell you straight if we're not a fit.
Private Duty Aides — East Lyme, CT
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