Board and care homes — the smaller, more personal option
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. Please consult appropriate professionals for guidance specific to your situation.
There's a moment that catches most of us off guard. Your parent comes home from the hospital, and you realize within a few hours that something fundamental has changed. They need help getting out of bed. They can't manage their medications. They're confused about time. The house you thought was home suddenly feels impossibly difficult to manage. You stand in their kitchen at three in the morning, knowing they shouldn't be here alone, and you start to understand that "home" might not be the safest place for them anymore.
This realization hits differently for everyone. For some, it comes after a fall that breaks everything. For others, it's the slow accumulation of small failures that suddenly add up to something undeniable. A stroke. A surgery with complications. An infection that won't clear. Whatever brought you here, you're now facing a decision that feels enormous and impossible. Placing your parent in a care facility isn't what you imagined for either of you. It feels like failure. It feels like abandonment. It feels like your responsibility has shifted in ways you didn't consent to.
Before we talk about what kinds of facilities exist and how to choose, I want to say this clearly: there is no shame in recognizing that your parent needs more care than you can provide at home. This doesn't make you a bad child. It makes you honest. And in that honesty, you're often giving your parent something better than what they could have at home, even if it doesn't feel that way.
When Medical Care Becomes Necessary
The hospital has been managing your parent's pain with IV medication every four hours. At home, you can't do that. The therapist who helped them relearn how to walk works in a facility. The wound from surgery needs daily dressing changes under strict sterile protocol. These aren't preferences or conveniences. These are genuine medical needs that require trained staff, specialized equipment, and around-the-clock supervision.
Some situations are temporary. A hip surgery recovery typically lasts four to twelve weeks. Your parent goes to rehab, relearns mobility, and if all goes well, returns home with maybe a walker or grab bars. During those weeks, they need intensive physical therapy. They need someone to monitor for complications like blood clots. They need medication management when their mind is still fuzzy from surgery and anesthesia. A skilled nursing facility makes sense because it's time-limited and goal-oriented.
Other situations are longer or open-ended. A stroke leaves your parent partially paralyzed. Their speech is affected. They can't swallow safely. They need help with everything. Recovery is possible and unpredictable. Some people regain surprising function. Others plateau quickly. The facility keeps them safe while you figure out what comes next, and they provide the specialized care that recovery requires.
Sometimes the medical reality is that your parent will never go home again. They have advanced dementia and no longer recognize you. They have late-stage cancer. They have advanced heart disease. In these cases, the facility isn't a stopgap. It's where they'll spend their remaining time.
Levels of Care Explained
Here's where the system gets confusing, and I'm going to be honest about that. The terminology is intentionally unclear. Different states use different words. Medicare has different definitions than Medicaid. Insurance companies have their own categories. It's deliberately complicated, possibly because if families understood what they were actually paying for and what they weren't covered for, someone in the system would face difficult questions.
Skilled nursing care means there are licensed nurses on staff and a doctor overseeing care. Someone with a medical degree is responsible for your parent's treatment. This is what comes after most surgeries. This is what you need if your parent has complex medical conditions requiring daily nursing assessment. Insurance is more likely to pay for skilled nursing because it's medical in nature. But there's a threshold. If your parent has recovered enough that they no longer need daily nursing assessment, even if they still need help getting dressed and bathing, they've "medically improved." This is insurance language for "we're done paying." You'll be told that they need custodial care now, not skilled care.
Custodial care means help with daily living. A caregiver assists with bathing, dressing, meals, toileting. There's no nurse deciding whether to increase blood pressure medication or evaluating a new symptom. The staff are trained caregivers, not nurses. Most insurance won't pay for this. This is where families get shocked when they see the bill. Medicare doesn't cover custodial care at all. Medicaid covers it, but only if your parent's resources have been properly spent down. Private insurance sometimes covers a limited amount. Most of custodial care, most of the time, comes out of pocket.
Some facilities provide both skilled and custodial care. Your parent might move from one unit to another as their needs change. Others are custodial-only. Understanding this matters when you're evaluating what care your parent actually needs and what you'll actually be able to afford.
Assessing the Need
Your parent's doctor might recommend facility care, or you might find yourself pushing for this recommendation because you know something has to change. Either way, there's a real medical need, and there are also your own needs and limits. These two things aren't in opposition, even though guilt will try to convince you they are.
Your instinct matters more than you think. If you're the one at home at night and you're terrified every time they go to the bathroom because they might fall, your instinct is valid. If you've called the ambulance twice in the past month, your instinct is valid. If you're exhausted beyond recovery and starting to resent them, your instinct is valid. This isn't about love. It's about whether you're actually able to provide safe care.
Some placements are explicitly temporary. The facility document will say "transitional care" or "subacute care" or "post-hospital rehabilitation." Everyone involved understands the goal is a return home or a transition to a different setting. This changes how you approach the stay. You're actively involved in recovery. You're gathering information about what will and won't be possible at home. You're planning the discharge while they're still in care.
Other placements are permanent or indefinite. Your parent isn't going home because they can't be at home safely, or because there is no home anymore, or because they don't have the capacity to make that choice. This is heavier. You're not in problem-solving mode. You're in adaptation mode. You're building a different kind of relationship with your parent in a different kind of place.
Sometimes you won't know which kind of placement this is going to be until you're already in it. The facility will tell you, "Let's see how they do," which is code for "we're going to watch and make decisions as we go." This is maddening because you want to know. You want to plan. You want to understand the shape of the future. But the future genuinely is uncertain. After a stroke, some people relearn function nobody expected. Others don't. Your parent's personality, their will, their medical trajectory, the quality of therapy they receive, whether a specific medication works, whether they develop a urinary tract infection. All of these things shift the prognosis. You're not being denied information out of malice. You're being told the truth: nobody knows yet.
What you do know is that right now, today, your parent needs care beyond what's safely possible at home. That's a legitimate fact. And making a decision based on that fact is not the same as abandoning them. In fact, it often means you're doing right by them.
How To Help Your Elders provides educational content for family caregivers. This is not a substitute for professional medical, legal, or financial advice. Every family situation is different; what works for one may not work for another.