The question everybody searches
Yes, it is free. That is not the useful question.
Every senior placement service you will find this week is free to your family, the national ones included. They are all paid the same way, by the care home, when somebody moves in. So "is it free" sorts nobody. Here is what actually separates them.
How the money works, plainly
A care home pays a referral fee when a resident introduced by an agency moves in. It is normally worked out from that home's monthly rate. No invoice reaches the family, and your mother's rate should not increase because an agency was involved — which is worth confirming with the home directly rather than through whoever referred you.
This is how the national services work and it is how we work. Anyone presenting "free to families" as their distinguishing feature is describing the entire industry.
The real trade: breadth or judgement
A national referral service can cover every state, which is genuinely useful if you are searching from another time zone for a parent you cannot easily visit. The trade is that the person you speak to is usually working from a database rather than from having stood in the building, and the roster is limited to communities that have an agreement with them.
A local advisor covers one county and nothing else. The trade there is obvious too: we cannot help you in Ohio. What we can do is tell you that the home on your shortlist has one caregiver overnight for fourteen residents, because we have been there at an awkward hour and asked.
Neither model is dishonest. They are different products, and families are rarely told that they are choosing between them.
Ask whoever you call
Five questions that sort any placement service
Including us. If the answers are vague, that is the answer.
Have you personally been inside this home?
The single most useful question there is. It separates an advisor from a contact centre in one move, and the answer is hard to fake because the follow-up question is 'what is the garden like'.
How many other people are you giving my number to?
Some services pass one enquiry to several communities, which is why families describe being called for two weeks. Ask before you hand anything over.
Do you get paid by every home on this list?
If one on your shortlist has no agreement with them, that is a good sign. If every single one does, ask what was left out and why.
What is this home's state licence number?
It is public, it takes seconds to look up, and there is no legitimate reason to withhold it. We publish it next to every home we name.
What happens in week three if it is not working?
The fee is usually earned at move-in. Ask what the service actually does afterwards, because that is when you will need somebody.
Would you tell me about a home that does not pay you?
Sometimes the right answer for a family is a home with no agreement with us, or no agency at all. We will say so and earn nothing. Ask anyone else the same.
The free option nobody mentions
There is also a service that is free to everyone
The Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program for Orange County states on its own site that it provides unbiased placement information and referrals to long-term care facilities, at no cost and with no commercial relationship to any home. The county's Office on Aging runs an information line as well.
Both are genuine alternatives to hiring any placement service, ours included, and it would be dishonest of a page about how we get paid to leave them out. Their numbers are on our free local help page.
What we add on top is time, access and having been in the buildings. For some families that is worth a great deal. For others one call to the county is genuinely enough, and if that is your situation we would rather you knew it than booked a tour with us.
Common questions
Paying for placement, answered
- Is a senior placement service free?
- To the family, yes, essentially always — including the large national ones and including us. The care home pays a referral fee when a resident moves in. Nobody in this industry charges families, so 'free' is not a point of difference and should not be treated as one.
- How do senior placement agencies actually make money?
- A community or care home pays the agency a fee when somebody the agency referred moves in. It is usually calculated from the home's monthly rate. The family is not invoiced, and the resident's rate is not supposed to rise because an agency was involved — ask the home to confirm that to you directly.
- What is the difference between a national service and a local one?
- Mostly whether anybody has been inside the building. A national service works from a database and a contact centre and can cover the whole country. A local advisor covers one area and has usually walked through the homes they recommend. Which is better depends on whether you want breadth or judgement.
- Will my phone number be passed to lots of facilities?
- With some services yes, and that is why families report being called repeatedly for a fortnight. It is a fair question to ask any service before you give them anything, including us. We do not sell an enquiry on to a list.
The longer version of how we specifically are paid, including what California law requires of a placement agency, is on this page.
Last reviewed . Figures are re-checked against their sources whenever this page is revised.
Ask us the five questions
Really — call and ask them. You will learn more from how we answer than from anything written here, and it costs you nothing to find out.
Tell us who you are looking after
Four short questions. Nothing you answer is shared with a facility until you say so.
Prefer to talk now? (714) 975-9652, open every day until 6pm.