Most agencies will not give you a number over the phone. You describe your mother's situation to a stranger, they book an assessment, and a week later you get a proposal you have no way to judge.

Here are ours, and then the arithmetic, and then the point at which we would tell you to consider something other than us.

Our rates

• $45 an hour for one to eight hours a day. This is the great majority of what we do: a home health aide coming in for a shift.
• $35 an hour for twenty four hour, around the clock care. The rate drops because the scheduling is continuous rather than a series of short visits.

For context, the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey put the national median for a non medical caregiver at $35 an hour. Massachusetts runs above the national median on essentially every labor cost, and we pay accordingly, which is the honest reason our shift rate is $45 rather than $35. You are paying Massachusetts wages to Massachusetts aides.

What that actually costs per month

These are the four schedules families in Reading actually ask for. Monthly figures are rounded and assume about 4.3 weeks in a month.

• Four hours a day, five days a week. Twenty hours weekly. $900 a week, about $3,900 a month. This is the classic arrangement: mornings covered, meals, medication reminders, a shower, some company.
• Four hours a day, seven days. Twenty eight hours weekly. $1,260 a week, about $5,460 a month. Weekends are usually what breaks a family, so this is often the honest version of the one above.
• Eight hours a day, five days. Forty hours weekly. $1,800 a week, about $7,800 a month.
• Eight hours a day, seven days. Fifty six hours weekly. $2,520 a week, about $10,900 a month.
• Twenty four hour care. 168 hours a week at $35. $5,880 a week, roughly $25,500 a month.

The number nobody tells you: where the lines cross

This is the most useful thing on this page, and it argues against us at the top end.

CareScout's 2025 national median for assisted living is $6,200 a month. Divide that by our $45 hourly rate and you get about 138 hours a month, which is roughly 32 hours a week .

Below about 32 hours a week, staying home with an aide costs less than assisted living and your parent keeps their house, their street and their routine. Above it, you are paying more than assisted living to stay home. Plenty of families make that trade deliberately and are right to, because a familiar house is worth real money to a person with memory loss or anxiety. But you should make it knowingly rather than discover it in month four.

The second crossover is starker. A private nursing home room ran a national median of about $10,798 a month in 2025, or roughly $129,600 a year. Our twenty four hour care runs about $25,500 a month, which is somewhere around two and a half times a private nursing home room.

We will say plainly what that means. Continuous private pay around the clock care at home is the most expensive option in long term care, and for most families it is a bridge rather than a destination: covering a few weeks after a hospital stay, holding a situation together while a spot opens somewhere, or supporting the last stretch of a life at home when that is what somebody wants. If you are planning to fund it out of savings for years, sit down with the numbers before you commit, and talk to an elder law attorney about MassHealth long term care eligibility.

What the rate includes

A trained home health aide, employed by us rather than referred to you. That distinction matters more than people realize: we carry the payroll taxes, the workers compensation, the liability insurance, the background checks and the supervision. If you hire privately through an ad you are the employer, with everything that entails, and if your aide is hurt in your parent's kitchen the exposure is yours.

Day to day the work is personal care, bathing and dressing, meal preparation, medication reminders, light housekeeping, laundry, errands, and companionship. If somebody calls out, covering the shift is our problem, not yours. That is most of what you are buying at the difference between our rate and a private hire.

Three things that change the number

• Transportation. Getting to appointments is a separate service on its own rate schedule rather than part of an hourly shift. Ask when you call.
• Stairs. If someone has to be brought down a staircase or a front stoop, that is a trained two person job and it is quoted separately. Tell us how many steps and whether there is a rail.
• Overnight versus around the clock. An aide awake overnight and an aide present twenty four hours are different arrangements. Say which one you actually need, because families often ask for the expensive one when the cheaper one covers the problem.

Use these Reading resources first

Before you pay anyone by the hour, spend an afternoon on this list. Every item is free or close to it, and each one reduces the hours you have to buy.

• Reading Elder and Human Services, Pleasant Street Center, 49 Pleasant Street, 781-942-6794. Open Monday through Thursday 8:30 to 4 and Friday 8:30 to noon. Start here. They know what exists locally and they will tell you about programs no website lists.
• The town van, free for Reading residents 60 and over, booked at least 48 hours ahead through the transportation coordinator at 781-942-6754.
• The Link. Free, door to door, on demand, running Reading, Wakefield, Burlington and Woburn from 7am to 7pm weekdays, with direct service to Lahey and Winchester Hospital. No age limit and no fare. Launched August 2026 and badly underused.
• Adult day health. The 2025 national median is $95 a day. Five days a week is roughly $2,000 a month for eight or nine hours of supervised care and social contact daily, which is a fraction of the equivalent hours at home. For a person who is safe alone at night but not during the day, this is often the single best value in the entire system.
• MassHealth. If your parent has MassHealth Standard or CommonHealth and a permanent or chronic disability, the Personal Care Attendant program may cover daily help, and PT-1 covers rides to appointments. Neither is fast, so start now. MassHealth is at (800) 841-2900.
• A Medicare Advantage plan, if there is one. Call the number on the back of the card and ask what in home supports and transportation the plan includes. Most members never ask.

Reading in particular

Reading has no hospital of its own, which shapes what an aide's day looks like here more than people expect. Appointments mean Lahey in Burlington, Winchester Hospital, or MelroseWakefield over in Melrose, and increasingly Boston for anything specialized. That is travel time attached to every medical visit.

The upside is that Reading sits where I-93, Route 128 and Route 28 converge, so from most addresses you can be at Lahey in about fifteen minutes outside rush hour. The practical advice we give every Reading family is to book appointments mid morning. The same trip at 4:30 on a Thursday is a different proposition, and for an older person it is thirty extra minutes in a car after an appointment that already tired them out.

Start smaller than you think

The most common mistake we see is families booking too many hours in month one out of anxiety, spending heavily, and then cutting back to nothing when the money gets frightening. The arrangement that lasts usually starts with the two or three hardest hours of the day, three to five days a week, and grows only when it needs to.

Tell us what the hardest part of the day is and we will tell you what it costs to cover just that.

Care Remedy provides home health aide care, wheelchair transportation and stair assistance in Reading and across Middlesex County, from our office at 100 Tradecenter, Suite G-700 in Woburn. Call 781-957-8076.

Our rates are current as of publication and are subject to change. Transportation, stair assistance and specialized care are quoted separately. National median costs for non medical caregivers, assisted living, nursing homes and adult day health are from the CareScout 2025 Cost of Care Survey, conducted July through November 2025, and are national figures rather than Massachusetts specific. Town program details are from the Town of Reading. Confirm current details before relying on anything here. This is general information, not financial or legal advice.