Hospice Support Care in Fairfield, 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.
It was late on a Tuesday when the hospice nurse from St. Vincent’s Medical Center explained that the next phase had arrived, and the room went very quiet. You drove home along the Post Road in the dark, trying to figure out what “comfort care” actually meant in practice, who would be there during the long hours between nurse visits, and how you could keep showing up for the rest of your family at the same time. That pull between wanting to be everywhere and knowing you can’t is one of the hardest things there is. We built this service for exactly that moment.
Private Duty Aides provides in-home hospice support care throughout Fairfield, CT, including neighborhoods like Southport, Greenfield Hill, Stratfield, and Tunxis Hill. We work alongside the hospice team already in place, filling in the hours they can’t cover and making sure someone calm and attentive is always in the home.
Hospice support care is non-medical presence and assistance for people in the final chapter of life. An aide stays in the home to help with comfort, personal hygiene, positioning, gentle conversation, and the ordinary care that keeps a person’s environment calm and clean. The hospice medical team handles clinical decisions. We handle the hours in between, which are often the longest ones.
Day to day, that looks like helping with sponge baths and mouth care, sitting quietly with someone who doesn’t want to be alone, making tea, assisting with light meals when appetite allows, and keeping the space tidy so family members can come home and actually be present rather than immediately managing tasks. Families in Southport and Greenfield Hill often tell us that having a steady, familiar face in the house changed what those final weeks felt like, for everyone in the family, not just the person receiving care.
After a discharge from St. Vincent’s Medical Center, families sometimes return home without fully realizing how much hands-on support they’ll need between the hospice nurse’s scheduled visits. We work directly alongside those nurses, reading their notes when families share them, understanding the care plan, and flagging anything that warrants a call to the clinical team. Because Private Duty Aides was founded by a working nurse, our aides come in already knowing how to communicate with hospice nurses clearly and without creating confusion in the care picture.
How it works
**Call or email us first.** You tell us what’s happening. We listen. There are no intake forms to fill out before you can talk to a person, and no pressure to commit on the spot. We just want to understand your situation.
**We match your caregiver carefully.** For hospice support care, the match matters more than almost anything else. We look at temperament, experience with end-of-life care, and what your family has told us about the person they’re caring for.
**Care starts within 48 hours.** For urgent situations in Fairfield, we often start the same day. We know this doesn’t wait, and we don’t make you wait when we can help it.
**We stay in contact.** You’ll hear from us regularly, not just when there’s a problem. If something changes with the care or the situation, you call us directly and someone answers.
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
A typical shift involves personal hygiene assistance like mouth care, gentle washing, or repositioning for comfort, along with light housekeeping, meal preparation, and just being present. If the person is awake and alert, an aide will offer conversation, read aloud, or simply sit nearby so they're not alone. If they're resting, the aide stays in the home, keeps things calm and clean, and is there if something is needed. The goal is a steady, unhurried presence that lets family members breathe a little easier.
In most cases, we can have someone in the home within 24 to 48 hours of your first call. For families in urgent situations following a discharge from St. Vincent's, we do our best to start the same day. The sooner you call us, even before discharge if possible, the more options we have for matching the right caregiver quickly. We won't make you wait through a long intake process when time is genuinely short.
Private Duty Aides is a private-pay agency, which means we don't bill Medicare, Medicaid, or insurance directly. The hospice medical benefit through Medicare covers clinical services like nurse visits and medications, but it generally does not cover the kind of continuous companion and personal care presence we provide. Some long-term care insurance policies do cover private-pay home care, so it's worth checking your policy. We're happy to provide documentation if your policy requires it.
A home health aide typically works under a medical care plan, often ordered by a physician, and their visits are usually short and task-focused. Our hospice support care aides provide longer, more flexible shifts focused on presence, comfort, and personal care alongside the existing hospice medical team. We don't replace the hospice clinical staff. We fill the space between their visits with attentive, consistent support that keeps the environment calm and lets family members step back from constant caregiving when they need to.
Yes, and we consider it one of the most important parts of what we do. Before we send anyone for a first shift, we talk with you about what your parent is like, what makes them comfortable, what frustrates them, and what kind of presence tends to settle rather than agitate them. We look at our available caregivers through that lens, not just through the lens of who's available on a given day. If the match isn't right after the first shift, you tell us and we adjust.
We keep backup coverage in place so that a gap in your regular caregiver's schedule doesn't leave your family without support. If something comes up, we notify you as early as possible and send someone who has been briefed on your situation. We don't just send whoever is available. During hospice care in particular, we understand that an unfamiliar face showing up without context can be unsettling, and we work hard to avoid that.
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Hospice Care near Fairfield
No sales pressure. We'll tell you straight if we're not a fit.
Private Duty Aides — Fairfield, CT
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