Home care or old age home?

For most Indian families: home care is better when (a) the patient can be safely cared for at home, (b) someone is willing to be the family lead, and (c) the patient prefers home. A facility is better when (a) the patient has very advanced dementia with severe wandering or aggression, (b) no family member is reachable in emergencies, or (c) the patient genuinely prefers community living. We don’t have a stake in either answer.

With home care, you pay for a caregiver’s time and skill inside a home you already have, so the cost scales with hours of cover and the caregiver’s experience level. With an old age home, the fee bundles room, board, staff rotation, common facilities and often medical access, so it scales with room type (shared or private) and the level of care the facility provides. Neither is inherently cheaper; it depends on the hours of cover you actually need. We only give a specific figure after a free consultation, once we know the patient’s condition and the hours required.

These work well in Bangalore, especially for early-to-mid stage dementia. Live-in or day-shift caregiver at home + 2–3 visits a week to a senior day-centre for peer interaction, activities, and respite. Combines the strengths of both.

Sometimes, and that feeling deserves to be addressed, not dismissed. It usually softens when the caregiver builds a real relationship and the family adjusts to the rhythm. The opposite, a parent feeling abandoned in a facility they didn’t choose, is harder to repair.

Two signs: (1) the patient is wandering with intent to leave the home regularly despite locked doors and supervision, or (2) the family is no longer coping despite a trained attendant. Either is a valid reason to consider a facility, but most cases are manageable at home with the right caregiver.

We don’t place patients in facilities, that’s outside our service. But we can have an honest conversation about whether home care is realistic in your situation, and we’ll tell you when we think a facility is the better choice.

This is one of the clearest cases for a facility, or at least worth weighing seriously. A live-in caregiver solves most of it, but if the family also wants daily peer company and structured activity that a caregiver alone cannot provide, a facility or a hybrid arrangement with day-centre visits often suits better than a house that is otherwise empty most of the day.

You are not locked in. If the caregiver relationship is not right, we arrange a replacement, free on our 3-month and 11-month plans, and every placement carries a 7-day cooling-off period at the start. If the family later decides a facility is genuinely the better path, that is a decision you can make at any point, home care is not a one-way commitment.