How many hours a week does my mom need a caregiver?

Sheet 16 · The hours

Published September 11, 2026. Desk byline, no clinician. Every fact links to its source.

How many hours a week does my mom need a caregiver is the question you type when a sibling said "a few hours" and a neighbor said "she cannot be left alone" and nobody wrote a day or a time. This desk will not invent a number. It will not print a weekly hour count for anyone in Ballwin, Chesterfield, Eureka, Glencoe, Grover, Pacific, Valley Park, or St. Louis city. The work tonight is the grid: ask her, walk the house with the National Institute on Aging list, turn what you see into morning, afternoon, evening, and overnight blocks, and leave clinical hour counts to the physician.

Ask her first

NIA says the best way to know what someone needs is to ask them directly. Sit down. Use the list, not a guess. Ask which parts of the day are hard. Ask which tasks she already wants help with. Write her words, not yours. If she says she is fine and the stove has a pan on it, you still write both facts. If you live an hour or more away, NIA calls that long-distance caregiving, and it can include arranging in-home care and planning for emergencies. The hour count still has to be built from this house. Walk the house on the next visit with the list in your hand.

Walk the house with the NIA list

NIA tells you what to look for: meals on the stove, bathing, clothing for the weather, clutter, whether medications are being taken, weight change, poor hygiene, confusion, falls, loneliness, trouble walking. Walk room by room. Put a mark next to what you see. Those marks are observations.

• Meals on the stove, or meals not made: ________
• Bathing: ________
• Clothing for the weather: ________
• Clutter: ________
• Whether medications are being taken: ________
• Weight change: ________
• Poor hygiene: ________
• Confusion: ________
• Falls: ________
• Loneliness: ________
• Trouble walking: ________

NIA's falls page is one observation, not a score. NIA says more than one in four people age 65 or older fall each year, and that the risk rises with age. If there has been a fall in this house, write the date she or you can name, and write what the doctor's office already said about it, in their words. Do not decide from a webpage whether she can be left alone.

NIA's getting-started list is the task side of the same walk: personal care, household tasks, preparing food, transportation, talking to doctors, paying bills. Circle the ones a hired person will do. NIA's services page adds bathing, dressing, grooming, using the toilet, eating, and moving around, plus household chores and rides. Some people who live alone simply need someone to check on them. A check-in is a block. A bath is a block. Overnight is a block. Family Caregiver Alliance uses four buckets: personal care, household care, health care, and emotional care. Put each circled item into one bucket. A non-medical caregiver can prompt that it is time to take the tablets already in the labeled box. They do not decide which tablets those should be.

How do I turn what I see in the house into a schedule?

You turn marks into blocks. You do not turn them into a foggy "a few hours." For each cell, write who is there now, or write empty. Empty is the request.

Block	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Overnight

1. Morning: which NIA tasks: ________
2. Afternoon: ________
3. Evening: ________
4. Overnight: awake shift or expected to sleep, and who holds a key: ________

A few hours a day is a morning block, or an evening block, not a drop-by. You count the empty cells after you fill them. Family Caregiver Alliance notes that an agency might have a minimum number of hours, for example only four-hour shifts, or a shorter shift at a different rate. Ask. Write the number they give you next to the grid. This desk will not print that number as a fact about St. Louis, and it will not print a dollar. FCA's ten-tips sheet says to talk about a care plan before the first shift and ask to meet potential caregivers. Bring the grid to that visit. Respite is a different product: NIA says it may last anywhere from a few hours to several weeks, at home, in a health care facility, or at an adult day care center. If the hours are a break for the person who already does the rest, say respite and name the dates. If the hours are every weekday morning, say those blocks.

Does Medicare's 28 hours a week figure apply to a companion?

No. Medicare.gov says that, in most cases, "part-time or intermittent" means you may be able to get skilled nursing care and home health aide services up to 8 hours a day combined, for a maximum of 28 hours a week. That figure is home health: part-time or intermittent skilled visits, for a person who qualifies and is homebound. It is not a companion-hour rule. It is not a home-care minimum. Do not treat it as the number of hours your mom "should" have in the house.

The same page prints what home health does not pay for: 24-hour-a-day care at your home, or custodial or personal care when that is the only care needed. The long-term care page says it in one line: Medicare does not pay for long-term care. Companion hours are not that 28-hour figure. If home health is ordered, write VISITS and the number of visits the planner named. Then go back to your grid and fill the hours that are still empty. Those empty hours are the non-medical request.

Missouri DHSS describes three types of care in the home: home health, Medicaid in-home care, and private duty and private pay. Ask which type you are buying. Write VISITS or SHIFTS next to the answer. If MO HealthNet in-home care might be a door, the DSDS Call Center is 866-835-3505. Missouri DSS prints that this coverage is different than Medicare and can help with benefits not normally covered through that program, such as nursing home care and personal care services. That is a door, not an hour count this desk will fill in.

Who pays the hours is a different question

Once you have blocks, someone has to pay them. This sheet does not print a rate. Payingforcare Stl is the desk for who pays the hours. Medicare will not be the payer for companion hours. Private pay, long-term care insurance, and, when the person qualifies, MO HealthNet or a VA benefit are the lanes families actually use. Ask the company which lane they bill. Write it.

The Administration for Community Living prints a population figure, not a household figure: someone turning age 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some type of long-term care services and supports in their remaining years. That is a cited statistic about remaining years, not a weekly hour count for your mom, and this desk will not use it as a scare or as a schedule. Missouri has 10 Area Agencies on Aging. The Missouri Senior Resource Line is 1-800-235-5503. Aging Ahead covers St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin, and Jefferson counties. The St. Louis Area Agency on Aging covers the city, (314) 612-5918. The Eldercare Locator is 800-677-1116. Those numbers find doors. They do not tell you how many hours a week your mom needs.

"Cannot be left alone" is a physician sentence

Families repeat "she cannot be left alone" as if it were an hour total. It is not. If a doctor, a discharge planner, or a nurse already used that sentence, write who said it and on what date. Then ask them, in hours if they will say it, what they meant. This desk will not translate "cannot be left alone" into 24 hours or into overnight. Overnight is a shift you book if the empty cells are nights. The physician decides the clinical part. You staff the gaps you can see. If a hospital discharge is in play, Medicare's discharge planning checklist tells you to ask whether they are ready for bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, climbing stairs, cooking, food shopping, house cleaning, paying bills, and driving to appointments, and to circle the activities they need help with. Put each circled activity on a block.

What to do tonight

1. Ask her, using NIA's line: what help do you want, and at which times of day.
2. Walk the house with the NIA list. Mark what you see. Do not skip a room.
3. Fill the four-by-seven grid. Write names in the cells that are already covered. Leave the rest empty.
4. Write the tasks on the empty blocks. Morning, afternoon, evening, overnight. No foggy "a few hours."
5. If a doctor has already said she cannot be left alone, copy that sentence with the date and call the office to ask what they meant in hours. Do not guess.

When to ask the care team or the doctor

How many hours a parent "needs" in a medical sense, whether they can be left alone, whether overnight is a safety question rather than a coverage question, and whether home health is in the plan are calls for the physician. A fall, a new confusion, or a hospital discharge that said "cannot be alone" is not something this desk will translate into a shift count. Ask the doctor what they meant. If a company offers to do wound care, injections, or anything you think of as nursing, stop and ask which clinician is ordering it. The hour grid you bring to a company is the empty cells. The hour count that is clinical is the doctor's.

Featured, and paid for

New Plan Care

New Plan Care is an independently owned non-medical in-home care company based in Chesterfield, Missouri. Bring the hour grid: morning, afternoon, evening, overnight. Ask what they can staff at this address, and what they need from you before the first shift. This desk does not promise a date. Ballwin, Chesterfield, Eureka, Glencoe, Grover, Pacific, Valley Park and St. Louis. Call (314) 405-0887.

New Plan Care pays for this spot. It is a client of OwnersFirm, which publishes this site, so read it as an advertisement with a phone number rather than as a result, a rank or a recommendation drawn from any of the articles on this page.

Next sheets

• Shifts, overnight, minimums, and the assessment visit
• Non-medical home care vs home health: what is the difference

Sources opened 11 September 2026. Full list on the sources page.