The South Carolina Home Care Guide
Home Care Terms, Defined
Every term South Carolina families run into when arranging care — defined in plain language, with a link to the page that owns the full answer. Each definition has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it.
Reviewed by the SteadiCare teamLast reviewed August 27, 202630 terms
Kinds of care
- Non-medical home care (in-home care)
- Help with daily living — companionship, personal care, meals, errands, a steady presence — provided in a person's own home. South Carolina licenses it as in-home care. It is not medical treatment: it works alongside doctors, home health, and hospice, never instead of them.
- What Non-Medical Home Care Means in SCOur care services
- Companion care
- The everyday-living half of home care: company and conversation, home-cooked meals, light housekeeping, errands and outings, and someone steady in the house. No hands-on personal care — that is the other half.
- Companion Care
- Personal care
- Hands-on, non-medical help with the body's daily basics — bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, and moving safely from bed to chair to bathroom. Provided by trained, background-checked caregivers.
- Personal Care Assistance
- Custodial care
- The word Medicare and insurers use for non-medical help with daily living — the bathing, dressing, meals, and supervision an untrained family member could in principle provide. “Custodial” is why Medicare doesn’t pay for ongoing home care: it covers medical treatment, not daily help. See Medicare below.
- Who pays for what
- Home health
- Skilled medical care delivered at home on a doctor's orders — nurses, physical and occupational therapists, wound care — usually as a short episode after surgery, illness, or a hospital stay. A separate license, a separate service, and a frequent partner of non-medical care.
- Home health, explained
- Hospice
- Comfort-focused care in the final months of life, chosen after a terminal prognosis. The Medicare hospice benefit covers the hospice team's visits, comfort medications, and equipment — but not someone at the bedside around the clock, which is where families often add a non-medical caregiver.
- Hospice and palliative careSupport During Palliative & End-of-Life Care
- Palliative care
- Medical comfort care alongside ongoing treatment, at any stage of a serious illness — not only at the end of life. Like hospice, it is a medical service; non-medical care works beside it.
- Support During Palliative & End-of-Life Care
- Respite care
- Short-term care whose purpose is relief for the family caregiver — a few hours, a weekend, or a planned stretch while the person who usually carries the load rests, travels, or recovers themselves.
- Respite Care
- 24-hour care & overnight care
- Around-the-clock coverage staffed in awake, rotating caregiver shifts — not one caregiver who sleeps over. Overnight care is the night portion alone: an awake caregiver through the hours when falls and confusion are most dangerous.
- 24-Hour & Overnight Care
- Transitional care
- Non-medical support through the first days and weeks home after a hospital stay — meals, steadying help, reminders, and a second set of eyes during the stretch when recoveries most often go wrong. Runs alongside home health, not instead of it.
- Transitional Care After a Hospital Stay
- Assisted living
- Housing plus daily help in a residential facility — licensed in South Carolina as community residential care facilities. The person moves to the care rather than the care coming to them.
- When care moves out of the home
- Nursing home (skilled nursing facility)
- A licensed facility providing 24-hour nursing care — the highest level of long-term care, for needs that outgrow what any amount of in-home help can safely cover.
- When care moves out of the home
People & planning
- Caregiver
- The trained person who provides non-medical care in the home. At a licensed South Carolina agency, every caregiver must pass state and federal criminal background checks and drug testing before entering a home — legal obligations, not promises.
- What the license requires
- CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant)
- A state credential earned through training and an exam, qualifying someone to assist with daily living and basic care under supervision. Many home care caregivers and coordinators began as CNAs — hands-on experience that shows.
- About SteadiCare
- Care coordinator
- The agency person who answers your call, plans the schedule, matches the caregiver, and stays involved after care begins. The single most useful question about any agency: do you actually know who yours is?
- Contact — who answers
- Care plan (care plan visit)
- The written plan of what help happens, when, and how — built around one person's routines and needs, not a standard package. At SteadiCare it is created during a free in-home visit by a nurse, before any commitment.
- How care begins
- ADLs (activities of daily living)
- The six basics of self-care: bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, continence, and transferring (moving between bed and chair). Insurers, assessors, and programs measure how much help someone needs by counting ADLs — the term shows up on nearly every form.
- Personal Care Assistance
- IADLs (instrumental activities of daily living)
- The running-a-household tasks: cooking, housekeeping, laundry, errands, transportation, managing medications and money. Trouble with IADLs usually comes first — and is usually the first thing home care takes off a family's plate.
- Companion Care
- Caregiver matching
- The pairing of a caregiver to a family — on needs, personality, and location, not just availability. The other half of matching is the replacement promise: if the match is not right, the agency changes it and stays involved.
- About SteadiCare
Licensing, oversight & choosing an agency
- In-Home Care Provider license
- The South Carolina license every non-medical home care agency must hold, issued by SC DPH under the Licensure of In-Home Care Providers Act and Regulation 60-122 (renumbered from 61-122 in 2024). Verifiable by anyone, in minutes, through the state's Find a Facility lookup.
- How to verify a provider
- SC DPH (Department of Public Health)
- The state agency that licenses South Carolina healthcare facilities — in-home care providers included — and takes complaints about them. It took over this role when DHEC split into successor agencies on July 1, 2024.
- If something goes wrong
- W-2 employee vs. 1099 contractor
- The question of who actually employs the caregiver. A W-2 agency carries the payroll taxes, insurance, supervision, and backup coverage; a contractor or registry model shifts much of that onto you. Ask any agency which model they use — the answer decides who is responsible when something goes wrong.
- Eight questions worth asking
- Private hire (independent caregiver)
- Hiring an individual directly, with no agency involved. Legal, and often cheaper — but you become the employer: the taxes, the liability, the screening, and the problem of who shows up when that one person is sick. A trade some families accept knowingly; the mistake is making it unknowingly.
- Stop signs
Paying for care
- Private pay
- Paying for care directly from family or personal funds — the most common way non-medical home care is covered, and the simplest and fastest to start.
- Cost & Payment
- Long-term care insurance
- Private insurance bought years in advance that reimburses long-term care costs — many policies cover non-medical home care. What qualifies, and after what waiting period, depends entirely on the policy, so read yours closely.
- Cost & Payment
- Medicare
- The federal health insurance for people 65 and older (and some younger people with disabilities). It pays for medical care at home — home health episodes and hospice — but not ongoing non-medical help with daily living, which it classes as custodial care. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a stop sign.
- Who pays for what
- Medicaid waiver (HCBS waiver)
- A Medicaid program that "waives" the usual nursing-home requirement, paying for care at home instead for people who qualify for nursing-home level care but want to stay home. South Carolina's primary waiver for seniors is called Community Choices.
- Cost & Payment
- CLTC (Community Long Term Care)
- The South Carolina Medicaid program that arranges and case-manages in-home services — operating the waivers — so eligible people can stay home instead of entering a facility. Every waiver participant has a CLTC case manager.
- Cost & Payment
- VA Aid and Attendance
- A monthly addition to the VA pension for wartime veterans and surviving spouses who need help with daily living. Families often use it to help pay for in-home care. Applications go through the VA or an accredited representative — never pay anyone who "guarantees" approval.
- Cost & Payment
- Visit minimum
- The shortest visit an agency will schedule. Minimums vary by agency and — at SteadiCare — by payment source, so ask early: a two-hour errand visit and a twelve-hour day are priced and planned differently.
- Cost & Payment
Sources & review
- South Carolina Department of Public Health — In-Home Care Providers
- S.C. Code of Regulations R. 61-122 — Standards for Licensing In-Home Care Providers — Renumbered to R. 60-122 after DHEC’s July 1, 2024 split into successor agencies.
- SCDHHS — Community Long Term Care & waiver programs
- Medicare.gov — Home health services and hospice coverage
- VA.gov — Aid and Attendance benefits
Sources accessed August 27, 2026. Definitions are general information, not medical, legal, or financial advice.
Reviewed for the SteadiCare team by Karli Wood
Vice President · Registered Nurse
Last reviewed August 27, 2026. Re-reviewed annually, and sooner when a source changes.
Update history
- August 27, 2026 — First published with 30 terms.
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