Who actually books one?
A daughter having surgery in March. A wife who has not slept a full night since spring. If you feel guilty for wanting a break, weigh it against the alternative: caregivers who never take one do not avoid a placement, they make it in a crisis, from a hospital corridor, into whichever home has a room.
Where does a respite stay happen in California?
In the same licensed homes that take permanent residents. The state licenses the six bed house and the hundred unit community alike, as a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, and there is no separate respite license underneath it. The word does not appear anywhere in the RCFE regulations, first section to last, so a nine day stay is an admission like any other.
Most short stays land in small board and care homes, and secured memory care is hardest to find at short notice. Rehab in a skilled nursing facility is not respite: different license, different regulator, and those records sit in Cal Health Find.
What does the home need before she can come?
Here is where your date gets decided. Before your mother can be accepted, the home must hold a medical assessment signed by a physician, made inside the last year, that includes an examination for communicable tuberculosis. That is the regulation, not the administrator being difficult, and nine days is held to it exactly as two years would be.
So your critical path runs through the doctor's office, not the home. Call today, ask the home to email its form within the hour, and count on a skin test needing a second visit to be read. That is how the week you wanted in May becomes a week in June. Two more things travel with her:
- A medication list saying what she actually takes, not what she was prescribed
- An honest account of transfers, night wandering and continence. Understating it is how a stay ends early.
What will a week actually cost?
Each home prices a short stay itself, quotes by the day, and sets that rate above what a month there works out to per day, because a week costs a home the same intake and turnover as a two year stay. Ask by name for the day rate, the minimum stay, and whether the one time move in fee applies, roughly $1,000 to $5,000 at larger communities.
Weigh it against the alternative. Agency care at home runs $30 to $40 an hour, so two weeks of round the clock cover is $10,080 to $13,440, and somebody still has to hand over every shift.
| Setting | Typical Los Angeles month |
|---|---|
| Board and care home, usually six residents | $3,500 to $6,000 |
| Assisted living community | $4,500 to $8,000 |
| Memory care, secured | $5,500 to $9,000 |
These are typical Los Angeles market ranges rather than prices we set or quote, and they move with care level, room type, and neighborhood.
Will anything help pay for it?
Medicare pays for none of it, not assisted living, not board and care, not custodial care anywhere. The one exception is hospice respite, which is inpatient, capped at five consecutive days at a time, and arranged by the hospice agency rather than by you.
Medi-Cal generally does not cover room and board in assisted living either, and its Assisted Living Waiver is built around an ongoing placement rather than a two week stay.
What does help is money nobody mentions. California's Department of Aging funds eleven Caregiver Resource Centers, respite is a core service at every one, and the Los Angeles center is at USC. If your father served, VA health care covers respite for enrolled veterans who qualify, and Aid and Attendance is a cash pension add on. Amounts change yearly, so ask a VA accredited representative rather than a paid claims service.
A long term care policy might pay for the stay, though the elimination period, commonly a month or longer, ends most two week claims before they start. Check that, the daily benefit, and whether a licensed care home counts as an eligible setting.
- VA Aid and Attendance and Housebound benefits, US Department of Veterans Affairs
- VA accredited representative and VSO finder, US Department of Veterans Affairs
What does a week tell you that a tour cannot?
A move is not reversible in any way that matters to an eighty six year old. A week is. A tour shows you a building on its best afternoon; a week shows you whether the call light gets answered at four in the morning and whether the evening caregiver speaks the language she has started drifting back into. Ask the home, before she goes, whether it would have a permanent room if the week went well.
How do I check a home before she goes?
Exactly as you would for a permanent move. Ask for the license number and search the CCLD Care Facility Search by number, because names in this business are unreliable, then read CDSS resources for residents and families on complaints and the Long-Term Care Ombudsman.
- CCLD Care Facility Search, California Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing Division
- CDSS facility search, California Department of Social Services
- CDSS resources for residents and families, California Department of Social Services
How is Senior Placement Agency LA paid?
Families pay us nothing. A community we introduce you to pays us a referral fee when someone moves in, and a respite stay that ends with your mother going home pays us nothing at all. We help anyway.
Keep reading
- Board and care homes in Los Angeles, where most short stays happen
- What senior living costs in Los Angeles, and how families pay for it
- VA Aid and Attendance for veterans and surviving spouses
- How to check an RCFE license in California before you move in
- Told a parent cannot go home: what to do in the next 72 hours
If you need a week, tell us which week
Call and tell us which week you need to be free. We will tell you which homes near you take short stays and what each wants before she arrives. If respite is not what you need, we will say so.
Questions families ask us
- What is respite care in plain terms?
- Short term care that takes over so the person who normally provides it can stop. It runs from a few days to about a month, most often a week or two, at home with a paid caregiver, at an adult day program, or as a stay in a licensed care home.
- How long can a respite stay last?
- A week or two is the most common. Homes take anything from a few days to a month, and many set a minimum of about a week, because a two night booking costs them the same turnover as a permanent resident.
- Does Medicare pay for respite care?
- Not for a stay in assisted living or a board and care home, because Medicare covers no custodial care anywhere. The exception is hospice. For someone already enrolled, Medicare covers short inpatient respite admissions with a small coinsurance, capped by federal rules at five consecutive days at a time and only in a Medicare or Medicaid participating facility. The hospice agency arranges it.
- How much does a respite stay cost in Los Angeles?
- Nobody publishes a rate. Each home prices a short stay itself and quotes by the day, and that day rate is higher than a month there divided into days. Ask for it in writing before you book.