How to Verify a South Carolina In-Home Care Provider

In South Carolina, an agency that provides non-medical care in someone’s home — companionship, personal care, respite, overnight presence — must hold an In-Home Care Provider license from the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH). The requirement comes from the Licensure of In-Home Care Providers Act (S.C. Code § 44-70-10 and following), and the standards agencies must meet live in Regulation 60-122 — renumbered from 61-122 when DHEC split into successor agencies on July 1, 2024.

Choosing a licensed agency gives families an important level of confidence. Licensing helps ensure the agency meets South Carolina’s requirements and gives you a way to verify that the agency is properly licensed.

1. 1

   Ask the agency for its license number

   Ask for the agency’s license number and the exact legal name the license was issued to. If an agency hesitates or cannot provide this information, consider that a sign to look further.

2. 2

   Look it up on SC DPH’s Find a Facility tool

   The South Carolina Department of Public Health publishes every licensed healthcare facility — In-Home Care Providers included — in its Find a Facility lookup on dph.sc.gov. Match the legal name, the license number, and the license type.

3. 3

   If anything doesn’t match, call DPH

   The Bureau of Health Facilities Licensing answers questions about licensure at (803) 545-4370. A two-minute call settles anything the lookup leaves unclear.

This is the part most families never see. Under South Carolina’s licensing standards, the license is not a plaque on a wall — it is a set of legal obligations about who is allowed to walk into your parent’s home:

• State (SLED) and federal criminal background checks on caregivers and administrative staff before hire — repeated at least every two years.
• Drug testing before employment, and random testing after it — a five-panel screen at minimum.
• Training for the duties a caregiver performs, documented and signed.

When an agency is licensed, these are not promises it makes — they are obligations the state holds it to. When an arrangement is unlicensed, every one of them is optional.

Be clear-eyed about the limits, too. A license is not a quality rating — it means the agency meets the state’s standards, not that its caregivers will be a good fit for your mother. And an In-Home Care Provider license covers non-medical care only: it does not make an agency a home health provider, and it does not put a nurse in the home. You still interview. You still ask the questions below.

License verified, the interview starts. These eight questions — asked of any agency, ours included — surface the differences that matter:

1. Who actually employs the caregiver — are they your W-2 employee, or a contractor? (It decides who carries taxes, insurance, and responsibility.)
2. What do your background checks cover, and how often are they repeated?
3. Are you insured, and will you say so in writing?
4. Who supervises the caregiver, and how often does someone check in?
5. How do you match a caregiver to my family — and what happens if the match isn’t right?
6. What happens when a caregiver is sick or on vacation? Who shows up?
7. What are your scheduling minimums, and what does my schedule actually cost — in writing?
8. How do you work alongside home health or hospice if they’re already involved?

• No license number offered, or a name that doesn’t match the state lookup.
• A promise that Medicare will pay for ongoing non-medical home care. It doesn’t — and an agency that says otherwise is telling you something about itself.
• Nothing in writing — rates, schedules, or the agreement itself.
• Cash only, or pressure to pay a caregiver directly “to keep it simple.”

One more, said carefully: hiring an individual privately — no agency at all — can be cheaper, and it is legal. But understand what you take on: you become the employer, with the taxes, the liability, the screening, and the problem of who shows up when that one person is sick. Some families accept that trade knowingly. The mistake is making it without knowing.

Licensing also gives families somewhere to turn. Concerns about any licensed healthcare facility or service — in-home care providers included — can be reported to DPH through its online Health Facility Complaints portal or by phone at (803) 545-4370 or 1-800-922-6735. That accountability simply does not exist for unlicensed arrangements.

We wrote this guide because we pass it. SteadiCare Home Care, LLC holds In-Home Care Provider license IHCP-2770 from SC DPH — look us up in Find a Facility under our legal name, ask us any question on the list above, and expect straight answers. The license details are on our About page, next to the people who hold them.