Caring Senior Service Review

Our Verdict

Not all seniors require the same level of care, however, and some home care agencies specialize in providing companionship and the in-home non-medical care services that assists clients with day-to-day activities. Caring Senior Service is one of these companies: they offer the essential companionship and personal care services that can dramatically improve a senior’s quality of life.

Services Offered

Caring Senior Service Review

Home care agencies offer reliable and compassionate help to seniors who want to stay at home even when faced with health challenges or other disabilities. Not all seniors require in-home medical care, however, and home care agencies specialize in providing companionship and personal assistance services that help clients with day-to-day activities.

Caring Senior Service is one of these companies: they do offer the essential companionship and personal care that can dramatically improve a senior’s quality of life.

Company Background

Caring Senior Service was founded in 1991, and unlike a lot of home care companies, it waited for more than a decade before moving to a franchise model, which suggests that the organization accumulated a fair amount of institutional knowledge of home care before choosing to expand. Its expansion has also been relatively slow: at present, it has around 60 franchises throughout the US (with five locations still owned directly by the company), making it one of the smaller home care franchise systems on the market. There are still a number of centralized policies guiding the individually owned franchises, however, including Caring Senior Service’s hiring practices, which involve doing bi-annual background checks of employees (including checking for criminal records), regular supervisory visits, and establishing individual care plans for each client.

Services and Offerings

Administration Also Praised

As mentioned above, Caring Senior Service provides all of the personal assistance services that seniors need to remain independent, from basic companionship to medication reminders to light housekeeping, meal preparation, and transportation, on up to help with feeding and toileting. The company also provides respite care for loved ones whose commitments or well-being requires them to step back from providing care.

Same Day Service

Caring Senior Service has on call staff 24/7 and is able to start care the same day. In addition, most home care companies will alter the rates they charge depending on the level of care required by the client and the time and day services are provided. Caring Senior Service takes a different approach: no matter what services they provide and when services are provided, they keep their hourly rate the same, taking some of the guesswork out of pricing them versus their competitors.

Tendio

Caring Senior Service gives clients and their families access to an online portal that allows them to keep tabs on their loved one’s care remotely. Through this Tendio software, people who have been granted access can review care plans, read notes from caregiver visits, check caregiver schedules, and communicate directly with Caring Senior’s frontline employees.

Tablet

Caring Senior Service also provides its clients with a mobile tablet pre-loaded with the company’s software: in addition to all the functions available through the software, the tablet also allows video communication between the client and their loved ones as well as many of the other functions of a mobile tablet.

Word on the Street

In our survey of online reviews, we took care to get responses from several locations with a fairly widespread geographic range. And while even a sampling of locations may not characterize what you’ll encounter at your local office, Caring Senior Service stood out in these consumer reviews, with customers giving them an average weighted rating of 4.7 out 5 stars based on the 100 reviews we surveyed.

Praise For Providers

Overall, customers praised Caring Senior Service’s caregivers with many people feeling that the employees they worked with made a significant positive difference in the lives of their loved ones. No company can guarantee that every employee will offer 100% satisfaction, but while there were a few complaints about Caring Senior Service’s frontline staff, there’s no question that the vast majority of reviewers appreciated the work of the people they interacted with, and there were repeated mentions of employees going the extra mile to help clients and families.

Administration Also Praised

Administering a home care agency can be a challenge, but Caring Senior Service office staff did receive their share of praise—about in line with what we’ve seen at other companies. Clients found administrators responsive to concerns, and ready to work hard to meet their needs. In addition, a number of reviewers specifically praised office (and frontline) staff for their skill in communicating issues related to their loved ones’ care.

Trust And Dependability

One consistent theme among the reviews was that frontline and office staff were dependable. There were a few complaints about caregivers not showing up on time or leaving early—complaints that can be found among all companies. 

Cost and Value

Like most national home care companies, Caring Senior Service runs on a franchise model, meaning that your local office is independently owned and operated. So it’s important to talk to your local office about the rates they charge. At the same time, we’ve taken pains to contact locations in a cross section of areas around the country—and then to compare the rates charged at those locations with the median rates in that area as reported by the Genworth Cost of Care study—in order to get a sense of any trends in terms of the rates charged across the franchise.