About Us

Home Sweet Home Care is a private duty home care agency that has provided quality home care aide services to seniors and convalescing adults in the San Francisco Bay Area since June of 1990. Founded by Shirley Cohen in response to her own urgent need and desire to find the right home care help for her mother, who had suffered a sudden and paralyzing stroke, Home Sweet Home Care has since established itself as one of the foremost eldercare agencies in the Bay Area, with busy branch offices in Redwood City and Walnut Creek.

Our services range from simple care such as homemaker tasks and assistance with activities of daily living to complete care for older persons suffering from dementia, incontinence or ambulation difficulties. Our Certified Nurses Aides and Home Health Aides are experienced in dealing with most diseases and conditions, including Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and many more.

Home Sweet Home Care offers a unique approach to in-home support services. We hire only the most experienced and dependable caregivers in the Bay Area and match each caregiver to the individual needs of our clients. Our quality control process, overseen by an experienced LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse), ensures that our clients always receive the utmost quality of care, and our offer of unlimited personnel replacements guarantees you’ll find the caregiver that’s right for you.

Our Commitment To You Is Personal

Part of our current success may have something to do with our strong consumer orientation. We're completely committed to helping people find the right care, because we know firsthand what a tremendous difference the right help can be in the life of a senior or convalescing adult struggling with long or short term disabilities. That's why our clients can relax and allow themselves to benefit from our years of experience managing thousands of private care arrangements.

Offering Security & Peace Of Mind

Another contributing factor to our success is the fine caliber of the aides we represent. All of our referred care providers have at least two years of home care experience in the last five years. Most have much, much more. We have a very careful and thorough screening process that involves checking criminal background records, DMV reports, employment references, social security numbers and more. We're also proud to say that we offer health care benefits (medical, dental, and vision) to those candidates who pass this rigorous process and perform well on our assignments. These and other benefits we offer help us retain good employees on a long-term basis as well as give us a way of thanking them for a job well done.

Roots In The Community

We belong to and participate with the following organizations:
–American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)
–American Society on Aging
–The National Private Duty Association
–California Chapter of the National Private Duty Association (NPDA)
–Elder Angels, Assisting Victims of Financial Elder Abuse (San Francisco Consortium for Elder Abuse Prevention)
–San Francisco Bay Area Regional Council
–Senior Round Table of San Francisco and San Mateo County
-Diablo Valley Estate Planning Council
-Contra Costa Senior Health and Resource Exchange

Mission & Philosophy

Mission: We envision a society that honors, protects and supports its elders and their natural desires to live in the comfort and serenity of their own homes. To facilitate this process, we do our utmost to carefully screen, recruit, retain and supervise the most outstanding home care aides we can find in the areas we serve. We are dedicated to finding honest, ethical, and reliable care providers and matching their skills and experience with the particular needs of our clients.

Philosophy: We know that most seniors, including those with a wide range of disabilities and chronic care conditions, prefer to stay in their own homes rather than in a facility, and we want to help them do so. To attain the ideal outcomes for our clients, we offer them our extensive experience and dedication to home care, since 1990, as well as our commitment to functioning according to the highest ethical standards. Because we believe that, with the right assistance and supervision, seniors can thrive and be happy in their own familiar surroundings, we strive to the be best, most helpful home care aide agency we can be, in each of the areas we serve.

Our Commitment

At Home Sweet Home Care, we take a personal interest in the success of each and every placement we make. We understand that our careproviders fill a special role in the lives of the seniors we serve, as well as their families. It is a unique bond and a special responsibility, and as such we take it very seriously.

Whenever possible, we meet with you directly to answer your questions and assist you in choosing the options that best suit your specific needs. We also stay in regular contact with you throughout the course of our relationship to assure that your needs are being met above and beyond your expectations.

Not only do we make sure the caregiver we send you has the necessary skills and experience to handle your individual needs, but we also go to great lengths to make sure that their personality and talents are a good fit for you as well. The best part is that if for any reason you are not completely satisfied with the caregiver we send you, we’ll gladly provide an unlimited amount of replacements until you find the match that’s just right for you.

Our emphasis has always been on hiring caregivers who are experienced, dependable, personable and caring—the kind of person we would feel comfortable hiring to care for own mother or father. All of our caregivers sign a written pledge to our company that they will do their very best to make a positive difference in the lives of our clients.

Our Pledge to You: We promise to make a positive difference in the lives of our clients by

– Listening to your needs with care and empathy.
– Responding to your inquiries quickly and completely.
– Worry-free by providing conscientious care providers.
– Treating you with the dignity and respect you deserve.
– Matching you with the most suitable caregiver on our staff.
– Giving you peace-of-mind with our excellent unlimited Replacement Guarantee!

Why Home Sweet Home Care - Eight Great Reasons To Choose Us

1. Personal Service
Whenever possible, we visit the client family to make them feel comfortable with us as a referral agency. Home visits help us assess the client’s needs directly, and they give us an ideal opportunity to evaluate our prospective client’s personality and environment, aiding our efforts to find the right match for them. After placement, we continue to remain in contact to assure our client’s needs are being met to their complete satisfaction.

2. Affordability
Realizing the ever-increasing need for qualified, reliable, and affordable services, Home Sweet Home Care remains dedicated to providing quality care at reasonable rates. Relative to the level of care required, we will do our utmost to provide the care you need at a rate you can afford.

3. Courteous and Responsive Service
We provide speedy and courteous service at all times. Whenever possible, we provide same-day service; but for optimum results, especially on long-term placements, we prefer at least three-days’ notice. Our office hours are 8:30am - 5:30pm, Monday - Friday. However, after-hours, urgent calls can be relayed to our coordinator through our 24-hour answering service, seven days a week.

4. Bonded and Insured
Home Sweet Home Care is a bonded and insured referral agency, fully covering our clients against property damage, theft and/or any employee accidents that may arise on the job. All of our candidates are experienced and carefully-screened providers of home care services who have been selected on the basis of their excellent backgrounds, skills and professionalism.

5. Full-Service Accounting and Payroll Management
We will manage all of the cumbersome details of being an employer, including computerized paychecks, handling Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, City and County Payroll Taxes, W-2 Transmittal Forms, and Worker’s Compensation filings and responsibilities.

6. Excellent Benefit Package For Our Employees
In order to insure that we retain the best employees in the field, we offer our staff medical and dental benefits. Although few other of our competitors do this, we feel it is important and necessary, as insuring our employee's health helps us keep healthy, stable and satisfied employees on our assignments. And since they are motivated to work well for our clients in order to keep these jobs and benefits, we notice much less turnover and more client satisfaction.

7. Client Satisfaction
Home Sweet Home Care knows how important careful screening is to our clients, and we do our utmost to provide qualified candidates with good work histories and excellent references. For long-term placements, retained on a referral basis, you’ll have up to 90 days to decide whether you want to retain your aide. If, for any reason, you’re not fully satisfied, we’ll offer you other qualified candidates until you find the one you want to retain on a long-term basis. With the Agency-Managed cases, we will provide as many replacements as needed.

8. A Licensed Vocational Nurse (L.V.N.) on staff providing expert supervision and direction
Our LVN will visit each of our full-time clients to make sure they are getting the care they need and deserve from our careproviders. His role is to guide and assist our aides so that they function according to the optimum care standards set by the agency. He will make visits to spot-check our aides' compliance with our scheduling and care management standards.

Meet Our Staff

Shirley Cohen
Executive Director

Looking for reliable help to care for a loved one at home can be a daunting task, even under the best of circumstances. More often than not, an urgent care situation will happen just when you're least prepared to deal with it. That's what happened to our company's president and executive director, Shirley Cohen, in the spring of 1990.

A paralyzing stroke left Shirley's mother completely disabled and in need of 24-hour care. But Shirley didn't have the heart to put her in a nursing home. Like any other caring daughter, she preferred having her mother recuperate in the comforts of her own home. So, she set out to find a team of careproviders who could give her the quality care and attention she needed. That meant taking several weeks off work and spending many hours interviewing prospective aides, checking their references, etc. Also, she came to find out that, in addition to the emotional toll, the whole experience would be very time-consuming and tiring because of all the large and small details that require attention, such as making arrangements for medical visits and equipment, dealing with finances and legal issues, etc.

"How do busy working people manage this problem? What do they do when their aide calls in sick or needs time off to handle their own personal emergencies?" she remembers wondering.

Shirley's concern for her mother's needs, and her empathy for others facing similar situations, inspired her to establish HOME SWEET HOME CARE. Not only was she able to keep her mother at home for the following eight years, but social workers and hospital discharge planners from all over the San Francisco Bay Area began to rely on her agency to provide top caliber companions and nurse's aides.

These days the agency is regularly called upon to manage the home care needs of patients of local HMO's as well. And, in order to meet the increased demand for our services in the Silicon Valley area, we've opened a branch office in Redwood City. When asked what qualities she attributes to her remarkable success, she says, "Honesty, integrity and attention to details, large and small."

Fanya Komanovsky
Accounting Manager

Fanya Komanovsky has been managing our Accounting Department for the past 11 years. Throughout her employment with the Agency, she has been focused, responsible and, most importantly, extremely accurate. Originally from Russia, Fanya brings to the Agency, a tremendous work ethic, with her perfect punctuality and excellent attendance record, that serves as a wonderful model to all our employees, especially the younger ones. Whatsmore, few employees ever find mistakes in their payroll checks although quite a few thought they did. The same is the case for our clients. They always receive timely and accurate statements of their accounts. We couldn’t be happier with her supervision of our Accounting Department and trust you will find her to be a great help when it comes to clarifying your account details or getting paid as an employee or vendor.

Angelica de Leon
HR Coordinator

Angelica de Leon is another vital person in our organization. She is our Hiring Coordinator. She makes the whole applicant/personnel process smooth, assists with scheduling, staffing, and a myriad of important office details. Angelica, a mother of three, two grown, and one 5th grader, took her B.A. years ago in Business Management, then became a Sales Marketing Manager for a famous multi-national pharmaceutical and consumer products company for eleven years before her husband moved the family to the U.S. Upon arrival here, she started working as a personal care aide in a large assisted living center of 150 residents in San Mateo County. Within two years, she became the Associate Director for the facility’s Personal Care department. Her competence, diligence, sweetness and her courteous manners make her a star wherever she goes. We all feel lucky to have her working with us and plan to keep her around for a long, long time to come because she makes our whole personnel process a well-choreographed, enjoyable ballet.

Rowena Cervantes
Redwood City Business Development & HR Associate

Rowena Cervantes is our HR Coordinator and also assists us with business development. Every one of our office staff agrees that she is an extremely vivacious and caring person and that her laugh is very infectious. As a single mother with 3 girls, aged 8, 12 and 15, we all wonder how she does it all while radiating such positive energy! Rowena helps us with a myriad of important details related to researching applicant's backgrounds and references, conducting orientations, training our new recruits on our policies and procedures.

Rowena got her start in home care working in San Diego, her former home town, for several large nurses' recruiting agencies for more than six years. Then she moved to Sacramento so that he and her kids live closer to her mother, but after a year and a half, she move to San Francisco because of her allergies. She said she was thrilled to see our help wanted ad and prayed that our company would be a good fit. So far we think she fits like a glove. We trust that our applicants, employees, professional associates and clients will feel the same way.

Tracey Love
Walnut Creek Branch Manager

Tracey Love is the Manager of our new Branch Office in Walnut Creek. Tracey brings along a wonderful wealth of skills and experience that she gained in her career and personal life to date. Born and raised in Modesto, Tracey got her B.A. in Business Administration and began her career in the financial services industry as a Financial Advisor. Later, she became the Operations Manager of a registered investment advisory firm. When that firm changed hands, she went to work for the distinguished Charles Schwab Company for more than five years.

As a primary care giver for her elderly great aunt and uncle whom she took care of in her own home, and as an administrator for a health savings account firm until recently, Tracey gained valuable insight and experience about seniors and their issues. Also, her energetic and effective volunteer work as a fundraiser and national conference organizer for the American Liver Foundation's PBC Organization drew praise and much deserved recognition from that community.

Tracey is justifiably proud of her large extended family including healthy, active grandparents and four nieces and nephews that she dotes on just as much as her beloved, mini Schnauzer, named Liberty. We're happy she's joined our team and look forward to many years of growth and ever-increasing goodwill in the East Bay region under her management.

Alexis Dunnigan
LVN/Quality Assurance Manager

In an effort to enhance the quality of our commitment to our clients, Ms. Alexis Dunnigan, LVN, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, has been selected to be our Quality Assurance Manager and will oversee our field staff to make sure they are working in compliance with Agency's standards.

Nursing was something Alexis wanted to do since childhood. She actually started volunteering at the UCSF Hospital when she was in the 6th grade! By the time she graduated nursing school and became an LVN, Alexis knew that nursing was for her -it was what she wanted to do with her life. Now she's enrolled in nursing school again -this time to get her RN degree. "I particularly enjoy this opportunity," says Alexis "to work with seniors because I love them and am very interested in studying all I can about the whole aging process."

Alexis will visit each of our full-time clients at the outset of our engagement, and then on a periodic basis, to make sure they get the care they need and deserve. Depending on the specific needs of each client, she will make care plan and discuss with our care providers the special needs and requirements of our client (s). In most cases, she will notify the client or the client's representative 24 hours in advance, but periodically she will visit without prior notice to spot check our aide's compliance with our scheduling and care management standards. She will also be available to discuss home care issues with our clients and care providers by phone, Monday, Wednesday and Friday 10 am to 4 pm.

Please note that Alexis will not be administering drugs, giving injections or managing wounds. Her role is to guide our aides into functioning according to optimum care standards. Among her concerns are the following:

• Safe transfers and injury prevention
• Special diets Neat and tidy housekeeping standards
• Home safety review
• Good client grooming & hygiene standards
• Universal precautions
• Familiarity with infection control
• Conflict resolution as needed Professional appearance of care provider
• Documentation review
• Recognizing symptoms Emergency instructions

Our part-time clients may also request a licensed nurse's visit; however, an additional charge will apply. Please call (415) 776-7337 to set up an appointment, expedite one, or, if necessary, to reschedule her assessment visit to your home.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What if my aide gets sick or is temporarily not available?

No worries. We have an excellent replacement policy! Usually, your aide will advise the agency right away, and we will send a substitute whose skills and experience match the one you need.

2. Am I obligated to continue services for any set period of time?

Not at all. You are under no obligation. You can cancel at any time. However, we would appreciate your giving us as much notice as possible so we can insure job continuity for the aide.

3. Does Medicare cover any part of these expenses?

In most cases, no. The homecare benefit afforded by Medicare is usually provided by your primary hospital or HMO affiliation and includes some minimal care services following an acute incident/stay at a hospital or skilled nursing facility.

4. What is the difference between live-in and shift care?

A live-in is actively available to work nine hours in a twelve-hour period. The other three hours are designated by law for meal breaks and rest. After their hours of duty are completed, he or she may be available to accommodate a client's needs, once or twice a night, if needed. If, however, it is reported that a client's needs continue to exceed this limit, another aide will be assigned to work on a shift basis. While this care level is more expensive, (in most cases, doubling the cost), it is also the most attentive care available, particularly appropriate for very sick, terminal or restless patients.

5. Does your agency provide transportation services to its clients for errand and doctor visits?

Yes, many of our aides are licensed drivers with clean DMV reports. They can be made available to drive/escort our clients to their medical appointments, hairdressers and/or excursions. We, of course, carry appropriate, supplemental liability insurance. A nominal surcharge will be assessed to defray the costs to the driver for gas, insurance and auto usage.

6. Who handles the general liability and workers' comp insurance, the medical benefits and payroll deductions?

We do, unless you select our client-managed option. Nine out of ten people request our agency-managed option because it's easy, and it covers all the burdensome details of being an employer for you. There is, however, a small handling fee involved, so, if you are on a tight budget, the client-managed approach may be a little more economical over the long-term.

7. Will our aide handle housekeeping and meal preparation?

All of our aides are happy to assist with meal preparation and light housekeeping duties, such as laundry, bed making, vacuuming the client's living room, and keeping the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, tidy and clean.

8. Can I hope to find a qualified aide who speaks our native language?

We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage qualified aides from all backgrounds to apply. Currently, we have a wide range of languages represented among our pool of qualified, available aides. Availability fluctuates daily, however. For your added convenience, our office administrative staff can assist you in the following languages: Chinese, Russian, Tagalog and Japanese.