Personal care at home in Highland Park and University Park means a trained, non-medical caregiver comes to your parent's house and helps with the private, physical parts of the day: bathing, dressing, grooming, using the toilet, moving safely from bed to chair, and eating. Visits are four hours or more, at one flat rate of $30–34 an hour, and the whole point is to help your parent keep living in the family home with their dignity intact.
If your mother or father still lives in the house you grew up in, a few blocks from Highland Park Village or a short drive from Snider Plaza, you probably already know the moment that brought you here. The same blouse three days in a row. A hesitation at the top of the stairs. This guide explains what personal care includes, what it does not, and how families here set it up.
What does “personal care” actually mean?
Personal care is help with the activities of daily living, the basic self-care tasks a person does every day to stay clean, fed and safe. When a doctor or a long-term care insurance policy asks how your parent is managing, these are the tasks they mean:
- Bathing. Getting in and out of the tub or shower, washing, drying, and skin checks for redness or dryness.
- Dressing. Choosing clothes and managing buttons, zippers, socks and shoes without balancing on one foot.
- Grooming. Brushing teeth or cleaning dentures, shaving, hair care, lotion, nail filing.
- Toileting and continence care. Getting to the bathroom in time, cleaning up, changing briefs or pads, and keeping skin clean and dry.
- Mobility and transfers. Standing up from a chair or bed, walking with a cane or walker, getting on and off the toilet, and getting in and out of the car.
- Eating. Preparing a meal your parent will actually eat, cutting food, encouraging fluids, and sitting with them so the meal happens.
Our personal care service covers all of these. Most families need help with two or three to begin with, usually bathing and dressing, and add others as needs change. Where continence is part of the picture, our incontinence and hygiene care handles it the same calm, matter-of-fact way.
What does a non-medical caregiver do, and what stays with home health?
A non-medical caregiver helps with daily living. Home health is different: it is skilled care from a nurse or a physical, occupational or speech therapist, ordered by a doctor, usually for a limited period after a hospital stay or a change in health. The two often work side by side. A therapist may visit twice a week to work on walking, while a caregiver is there every morning to keep those safe-walking habits going.
We are licensed in Texas for Personal Assistance Services, which is non-medical. If you are trying to sort out which kind of help your parent needs, our guide to home care versus home health walks through it in more detail.
| Personal care task | What the caregiver does | What stays with the nurse or doctor |
|---|---|---|
| Bathing | Sets up the bathroom, helps with the transfer, washes and dries, notices red or broken skin and tells the family | Treating wounds, pressure sores or skin infections |
| Dressing | Lays out clothes, helps with fastenings, socks and shoes, puts on simple compression socks if the doctor has asked for them | Fitting braces or medical garments that need a clinician |
| Toileting and continence | Helps to and from the toilet, changes briefs, cleans and protects skin, keeps a simple log | Catheter care, ostomy care, diagnosing a urinary infection |
| Mobility and transfers | Stands by or assists with standing, walking and transfers using safe technique and the family's equipment | Designing an exercise or therapy program; operating lifts or medical equipment |
| Eating | Prepares meals to the diet the doctor set, cuts food, encourages fluids, notes how much was eaten | Tube feeding; prescribing a special diet |
| Medications | Reminds at the right times and reports a missed or refused dose | Giving medication, injections, adjusting doses |
How do you protect a parent's privacy and dignity?
This is the part families worry about most. Being helped in the bathroom is a loss, and it can feel bigger when the help comes from your own child. A good caregiver turns it into a routine:
- The same caregiver. We match one primary caregiver to your parent so the person in the bathroom is someone your parent knows, not a new face each week. If the match is not right, the family can ask for a change at any time.
- The same times. A shower at nine every Tuesday and Friday is easier to accept than a shower whenever someone decides it is time.
- Covered, warm and unhurried. A towel over the shoulders while washing, a warm bathroom, the door closed, and no rushing to get it over with.
- Your parent does what they can. If your father can button his own shirt in five minutes, the caregiver waits five minutes. Doing it for him would be faster and would cost him something he still has.
In the Park Cities there is one more layer. Neighbors here have often known the family for decades, and some parents care a great deal about not looking like they need help. A caregiver arrives in ordinary clothes, parks out of the way, and is introduced however your parent prefers, as a helper, a friend of the family, or simply by name. If bathing has already turned into a standoff, our article on a parent who refuses to bathe explains why it happens and what changes the answer.
What makes bathing harder in an older Park Cities home?
Many homes in Highland Park and University Park were built long before anyone planned for aging in place. The full bathroom is often upstairs, up a narrow staircase, and still has its original tub with a shower above it. That combination is the single most common reason families call about personal care. Stepping over a tub wall onto wet porcelain is a hard move for anyone with weak legs or poor balance.
You do not need a remodel to make it safer. A few practical steps go a long way:
- Measure before you buy. Original tubs are often shorter and narrower than modern ones, and a standard bench may not fit. Measure the inside length and the rim width first.
- Use a transfer bench, not just a stool. A tub transfer bench straddles the tub wall, so your parent sits outside the tub, swings one leg over and then the other, and never stands on one foot on a wet surface.
- Add a handheld shower head. It lets your parent stay seated, keeps water off the face, and makes it easy to start at the feet and work up.
- Install grab bars properly. Anchored into studs or with the right fasteners for tile, beside the tub and next to the toilet. A towel rack is not a grab bar and will not hold a falling adult.
- Raise the toilet seat if standing up is a struggle. A raised seat with arms takes a great deal of strain off knees and hips.
Even with the right equipment, the riskiest moments are the transfers: in and out of the tub, on and off the toilet, up from the bed. That is where our transfer and mobility assistance comes in, with a trained person beside your parent at exactly those moments. For the stairs and floors themselves, our guide to safety in an older Dallas home covers each hazard room by room.
What does a four-hour morning visit look like?
Picture a common situation: a mother in University Park, widowed, still in the two-story family home, steady enough to get around the kitchen but no longer safe in the upstairs tub alone. A typical morning visit might run like this:
- 8:00–9:00. The caregiver arrives, says good morning, helps her out of bed and to the bathroom, and starts coffee. A quick look at how she slept and whether anything seems different.
- 9:00–10:00. A seated shower on the transfer bench with the bathroom warmed first, then dressing in the clothes she picked, hair, teeth and lotion. She does the buttons; the caregiver does the socks and shoes.
- 10:00–11:00. Breakfast at the table, a medication reminder at the time on her list, the bed changed and a load of laundry started.
- 11:00–12:00. A short walk on the block or a drive to Snider Plaza for an errand, lunch prepared and left ready, and a short note for the family about how the morning went.
How do families in Highland Park and University Park get started?
The first step is a free in-home assessment. We come to the house, meet your parent, look at the bathroom, the stairs and the bedroom, and write a care plan around the tasks that matter most. You can read more about the steps on our how it works page.
- Visits are four hours or more. That is our minimum, and it leaves time for a calm, unhurried bath.
- One flat rate of $30–34 an hour. The same for day, evening, weekend and overnight hours, and it does not go up as your parent needs more hands-on help. Our page on the cost of in-home care in Dallas–Fort Worth explains the numbers.
- Care can often start within 24 hours, which matters when a hospital discharge comes sooner than expected.
- We match the caregiver. We choose a caregiver whose skills and temperament fit your parent, and you can ask for a change at any time.
- No long-term contract. Hours can go up or down as needs change.
Highland Park and University Park are their own towns, surrounded by Dallas, and we serve both. Our pages on home care in Highland Park and home care in University Park cover the local details, from nearby hospitals to how visits fit around family life.
When is it time to add hours or move to 24-hour care?
Most families begin with a few mornings a week. These signs say the schedule is no longer enough:
- Your parent is managing well while the caregiver is there but struggling in the hours after they leave, especially with toileting.
- There have been falls or near falls at night on the way to the bathroom.
- Your parent is no longer eating unless someone sits with them.
- Incontinence has increased and skin is staying damp for too long between visits.
- You or a sibling are filling the gaps every evening and starting to wear down.
The next step is often a second daily visit or longer shifts. When someone needs to be there around the clock, our 24-hour care uses rotating caregivers who stay awake through the night, so help at 3 a.m. is as alert as help at noon. We do not offer live-in care, because a caregiver who is expected to sleep cannot also be ready for a night-time trip to the bathroom.
If you are weighing whether your parent needs help with bathing, dressing and the rest of the day, start with the personal care page or call us for a free assessment. This article is educational and is not medical advice; talk to your parent's physician about health questions, new symptoms or changes in medication.
