Hospice Support Care in West Hartford, 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.
You were sitting in the consultation room at Hartford Hospital when the palliative care team said the words you’d been bracing for. The drive back down Farmington Avenue into West Hartford felt surreal, the familiar storefronts blurring past while your mind was somewhere else entirely. Suddenly the question wasn’t about treatment anymore. It was about how to make the time that’s left feel like home. That’s exactly the moment we exist for.
Hospice support care at home means your parent or spouse can stay in their own bedroom, in the neighborhood they know, with someone steady beside them who understands what this kind of care actually looks like. Our aides work alongside your hospice nurses, not instead of them, filling the hours between clinical visits with comfort, calm, and real human presence. You get to be the family member, not the full-time caregiver.
Hospice support care fills the space between hospice nurse visits with consistent, gentle presence. Our aides help with personal hygiene, repositioning, light grooming, and keeping the person comfortable in ways that are hard to sustain around the clock as a family member alone. They also sit with your parent, read to them, hold their hand, and track small changes in comfort that the hospice nurse will want to know about at the next visit.
For families in West Hartford, the need often becomes clear right after a discharge from Hartford Hospital, when the hospice plan is in place but there’s a gap between the clinical schedule and what the person actually needs each day. Our aides step into that gap. Whether someone is living in the Elmwood area, over near Bishops Corner, or anywhere in the Quaker Lane corridor, we bring care directly to them without requiring any transition to a facility.
Families typically call us because they want someone who can be present and steady when they themselves need to sleep, go to work, or just sit somewhere quietly without watching for every breath. We handle the hands-on support so that when you walk in the door you can hold your person’s hand rather than managing a to-do list. That is the real work of this service, and our aides take it seriously.
Private Duty Aides was founded by a working nurse, and that background shapes how we train and match aides for hospice support specifically. Our founder understood that end-of-life home care requires a different kind of calm and attentiveness than other services, so we look for those qualities deliberately when we select who serves families in this situation.
Nurse-founded, and it shows
Our agency was started by a working nurse who watched families struggle with exactly this situation: someone at home on hospice, the clinical visits covered, but the hours in between unmanaged and exhausting. That experience is baked into how we hire, train, and brief every aide we send for end-of-life support.
Built specifically for this kind of care
Hospice support requires a particular kind of presence, someone who can sit quietly, respond to discomfort calmly, and communicate clearly with your hospice nurse team. We match for those qualities on purpose, not as an afterthought.
We stay reachable when things shift
End-of-life situations change, sometimes quickly. When something shifts in your person’s condition or your family’s needs, you call us and we answer. We adjust schedules, swap aides when needed, and stay in the loop with you rather than leaving you to figure it out alone.
We know West Hartford and Hartford County
We understand how Hartford Hospital’s discharge process works, what Hartford County hospice agencies typically cover, and what the gaps look like for families here. That local knowledge means we can move quickly and ask the right questions from the first conversation.
How it works
You reach out by phone or email, and we listen to your situation before anything else. No online intake forms to fill out, no pressure to commit. We ask questions because we want to understand what’s actually happening in your home right now.
For hospice support, matching matters more than just filling a schedule slot. We look at experience with end-of-life care, temperament, and what your family has told us about the person being cared for. Availability alone is never the deciding factor.
For urgent situations in West Hartford, we frequently arrange same-day or next-day starts. We know that when someone has just come home from Hartford Hospital on a hospice plan, waiting a week for support is simply not workable.
Once care is underway, we check in with you regularly and remain reachable when something changes. You will never feel like you handed off a problem and lost the thread. We stay part of the picture for as long as you need us.
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 aide helps with personal hygiene, repositioning in bed, light grooming, and keeping the person physically comfortable between clinical visits. They also provide quiet company, assist with small requests like getting water or adjusting pillows, and pay attention to any changes in the person's condition that the hospice nurse should know about. Some families also ask the aide to prepare light food or beverages if the person is still eating or drinking. The focus is always on comfort and calm presence, not on medical tasks that belong to the hospice nurse.
We aim to start within 48 hours of your first call, and for urgent situations we frequently arrange same-day or next-morning starts. We know that when someone comes home from Hartford Hospital on a hospice plan, the gap between discharge and the first hospice nurse visit can feel very long. Call us as soon as the discharge plan is in place and we'll work backward from that date to have someone ready.
We're a private-pay agency, which means we don't bill Medicare, Medicaid, or insurance directly. Medicare does cover the hospice benefit itself, including nursing visits, medical equipment, and some personal care through the hospice agency, but it generally doesn't cover the additional hours of aide support that families need beyond those scheduled visits. Many families pay out of pocket for our services to fill that gap. We're straightforward about costs from the first conversation so there are no surprises.
A home health aide typically works on a medically oriented care plan, focused on rehabilitation or specific health goals, and is usually prescribed and coordinated through a medical provider. Hospice support care is oriented around comfort, presence, and end-of-life dignity rather than recovery goals. Our aides work alongside your existing hospice nursing team rather than replacing them, handling the hours between clinical visits with the kind of steady companionship and personal comfort support that family members can't always sustain alone. The goals are different, and the pace of the care reflects that.
Yes, and we take that seriously rather than treating it as a courtesy. When we talk with you at the start, we ask about your parent's temperament, their communication style, what makes them comfortable, and what tends to cause stress. For hospice support in particular, the fit between a person and their aide matters enormously because the aide is often present during some of the most tender moments of a family's life. If the first match doesn't feel right, we'll adjust. We'd rather get it right than have you feel stuck.
We keep you informed and arrange a backup rather than leaving you to manage it yourself. We know that continuity matters especially in hospice support, so we try to introduce a secondary aide early so your parent has already met them if a substitution becomes necessary. You'll always have a direct line to reach us, and we don't send someone unfamiliar into a hospice setting without giving you the chance to know who's coming. Consistency is something we protect actively, not just a talking point.
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Hospice Care near West Hartford
No sales pressure. We'll tell you straight if we're not a fit.
Private Duty Aides — West Hartford, CT
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