Health Care Assistant or Companion Care? How to Choose for a Parent

Ask one question: **does the care involve touching your parent?**

Help with bathing, dressing, toileting, or getting out of a chair is **Health Care Assistant support — $42 an hour**. Conversation, company, errands, and keeping the house ticking over is **companion care — $38 an hour**. Both carry a three-hour minimum.

The $4 difference is the least important part of this decision. Choosing the wrong one leaves either a gap in care or a professional doing work below what they trained for.

Health Care Assistant support — $42/hr

HCA is a regulated role in British Columbia. Certified Health Care Assistants handle:

That last point is the one families underestimate. Dementia care is not "companionship plus patience"; pacing a person through a difficult afternoon is a trained skill, and it belongs on the HCA side of the line.

Companion care — $38/hr

For seniors managing independently who are alone more than is good for them:

Isolation is not a soft problem. It shows up as decline, and companion care is the intervention that is cheapest early and most expensive to have skipped.

Telling them apart in practice

**Choose HCA if:** your parent needs physical help with daily routines, has a condition that needs monitoring, takes medication on a schedule they struggle to hold, or has a dementia diagnosis.

**Choose companion care if:** they manage the physical side, live alone, have stopped going out as much, and the honest problem is that the days are long and quiet.

**Choose both if** the answer is genuinely both — an HCA morning for personal care, companion afternoons for everything else, is a common and sensible shape.

The third option families miss

If **you** are the one providing the care, the service you want is **Family Respite Relief Care — $42/hr**, three-hour minimum. A respite caregiver steps into the routine you have already built, so you can work, sleep, or leave the house without the arrangements collapsing.

Family caregivers routinely book care for their parent and never once book it for themselves. Respite exists precisely for that, and the people who need it most are the least likely to ask.

If you are not sure

Book the higher level first. An HCA can do everything companion care covers; the reverse is not true. Start at $42, see what the shifts actually consist of, and step down if the physical support is not needed.

Rates are identical across all 16 municipalities we serve, with no travel surcharge.