Caring for a Parent With Parkinson's at Home

Start with the day, not the diagnosis

When a parent is diagnosed with Parkinson's, most adult children start reading about the condition. That's natural. But the thing that will actually determine whether your father stays home safely isn't what you learn about the disease — it's what happens between 6 and 9 in the morning.

So start there. Walk through one ordinary day out loud. Who gets him out of bed? How long does it take to get dressed now compared to a year ago? Is he still cooking, or is he eating cereal three times a day because the stove has become a problem? Is he showering, or saying he showered?

Movement with Parkinson's can be slower and less predictable, and it often varies hour to hour — good stretches and harder stretches, sometimes on the same afternoon. That variability is what makes planning hard. A parent who managed the stairs fine at 10 a.m. may not manage them at 4 p.m. Build your plan around the harder hours, not the easier ones.

And talk to the neurologist about anything clinical — medication timing, therapy referrals, changes you're seeing. We don't weigh in on that, and any home care agency that does should worry you.

The hours that usually need the most help

Families tend to discover the same pressure points. Mornings are one: getting up, getting to the bathroom, getting dressed, getting breakfast in. Evenings are another — fatigue is higher, the house is darker, and that's often when falls happen.

Westmark has a six-hour standard minimum for ongoing home care visits. That's deliberate. A 90-minute drop-in doesn't help much with Parkinson's, because the hard parts are spread across the day and a rushed caregiver rushes your parent — which is exactly the wrong approach when movement already takes longer than it used to.

A six-hour morning block typically covers the wake-up, bathing and dressing, breakfast, light housekeeping, a walk if it's a good day, lunch, and a settled afternoon. Some families run mornings on weekdays and add weekend coverage when they're stretched thin. Others need overnight help because getting to the bathroom at 2 a.m. has become the riskiest part of the day.

If your parent is coming home from a hospital stay or a rehab facility, we offer a 4-hour post-discharge block at $44/hour — useful for those first unsteady weeks when you're figuring out what the new normal looks like.

Home changes that make the biggest difference

Most Massachusetts homes were not built for someone whose balance has changed. Older houses in Winchester, Reading, or Quincy are full of narrow doorways, steep stairs, and thresholds you stopped noticing thirty years ago.

You don't need a renovation. You need to remove the specific things your parent is catching a foot on:

• Clear one wide path through each main room — not decorative rearranging, an actual walkable lane from bed to bathroom to kitchen.
• Pull up throw rugs and runners. All of them. This is the single easiest change most families skip.
• Grab bars in the bathroom — by the toilet and inside the shower, mounted into studs, not suction cups.
• Light the nighttime route. Motion-sensor night lights between bedroom and bathroom.
• Chairs with arms. Getting up from a low, soft couch is much harder than getting up from a firm chair you can push off.
• Move daily items to waist height so nobody is reaching overhead or bending to the floor.
• Cords, pet bowls, and shoes off the floor in every walking path.

Rides to Boston without the parking garage argument

Parkinson's means appointments. Neurology follow-ups, therapy, labs, and often a trip into Boston to one of the teaching hospitals. For a family in Hopkinton or Bellingham, that's a half-day round trip with traffic, and it usually falls to whichever adult child has the most flexible job.

This is often the first thing families hand off. Our non-medical transportation has no minimum — it's quoted per trip. The driver comes to the door, helps your parent into and out of the vehicle, waits through the appointment, and brings them home. You're not burning a vacation day to sit in a waiting room in the Longwood area.

It's also a way to stop the driving conversation from becoming a fight. When there's a reliable alternative, giving up the keys stops feeling like losing independence and starts feeling like a reasonable trade.

What a non-medical caregiver actually does

Being clear about this saves everyone time. Westmark caregivers provide personal care — bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, transfer assistance, mobility support — plus meals, light housekeeping, laundry, errands, companionship, and medication reminders.

What we do not do: administer medication, provide skilled nursing, wound care, injections, or any medical treatment. Massachusetts doesn't license non-medical agencies, so we don't call ourselves licensed. We're insured, bonded, and background-checked. Every caregiver clears a CORI criminal background check, reference verification, an in-person interview, and a skills evaluation before they set foot in a home.

With Parkinson's, consistency matters more than usual. A caregiver who has worked with your mother for two months knows which side she prefers to be steadied on, how long the shower actually takes, and what a bad day looks like before it turns into a fall. We staff for that continuity rather than rotating a new face through every week.

What it costs and how to find out if it fits

Personal care runs $38/hour. Companion care, if your parent mostly needs supervision, meals, and company, is $34/hour. Overnight awake care is $38/hour, 24-hour live-in is $816/day, and weekends and holidays add $3/hour. Full pricing is on our rates page — no hidden fees, no deposits, no enrollment charges, no long-term contract. You give 48 hours' notice to change or cancel a visit.

Start with a free in-home assessment. Someone comes to the house, watches how your parent actually moves through their own space, and tells you what hours would genuinely help. No obligation. If the answer is that you don't need us yet, we'll say that.

Call (508) 233-8062 — a real person answers, any hour — or request a quote. If you're reading this at midnight because today was harder than yesterday, that's usually the right time to make the call.

Common questions