What is the accepted wage for private nonlicensed noncertified caregiver?

The cost of living is a huge factor in this, but, a non-medical in home caregiver here makes about 25 cents more than minimum wage, which would factor out to $168 a day if you consider it to be $7. However, most caregivers working for an agency are paid less for overnights, unless they are actually up a certain number of times throughout the night to work, rather than sleep.

@fontuckydick are you paying them as a “consultant” with Form-1099 at the end of the year?
If not you may have additional costs such as FICA accounting and SS taxes. Get a lawyer to put together a contract. Lawyers are cheaper than IRS and worker comp. claims in the long run.
Agencies are there for the protection of you and the hired caregiver.

In the county I work for, they get paid for 12 hours per day, if the person wakes up a maximum of 2 times per night. They get about $10 per hour. So $10×12 = $120. This is for what is called a Personal Care aide. They don’t do anything medical, just tasks (bathing, toileting, cooking, light housekeeping, dressing).

The county I work for is one of the wealthiest in the country, and granted, this rate is the take home. What they pay the agency is more, at least double that. The rate I quoted is the pay rate for a certified aide who works for an agency that’s bonded and licensed. You are saving by not paying an agency (or at least you should be saving), but your guy is asking a bit much with his daily rate.

If your father requires 24 hour care, that means during the night he would need assistance from a caregiver that would need to be either constantly awake or be woken up when your father needs him. If this is the case, one caregiver should not be allowed to go on both night and daytime duties. It’s not safe since any lack of sleep would diminish his performance the next day and that would not be fair to him and to the patient.

Be wary if a caregiver says he could do it because chances are he is thinking about the money and not his own safety and his patient’s.

There are cases when a caregiver wakes up twice or thrice in the middle of the night to assist a patient to urinate and then go back to sleep. But that is not the same as getting real good sleep and if this goes on and on, in a few weeks, the caregiver would look like a total wreck.

To give good 24 hour care for your father, my opinion is you need two caregivers doing night and day shifts probably interchangeably on a weekly basis. Rates between 10–13 an hour is not unheard of for this position, licensed or unlicensed. Either way it’s going to cost money, hiring from an agency or not. It’s which caregiver that matches your father’s personality and temperament that’s also important to consider. What you want are caregivers that are patient and kind and would form happy relationships with your father.

I guess the question is (since I do this for a living) what are your father’s night time needs? Does he wake up just once or twice, or is he up for long periods at night, or up multiple times at night? Like I said, in my county, twice per night is acceptable for aide to be unpaid but sleeping there at night. Any more than twice per night, then different aide needs to be there (2 aides working 12 hours each).