NJ Trade Group Wants to Redirect $100M From Home Care to Nursing Homes — What It Means for Families in New Jersey

A nursing home lobbying group is pushing Trenton lawmakers to pull $100 million in state funding away from home-based care and shift it to facility care. For NJ families who want mom or dad to stay home, this is the moment to pay attention — and to lock in a private care plan that doesn’t depend on state budget fights.

What’s happening

According to reporting from The Jersey Vindicator this month, a New Jersey trade association representing nursing facilities is urging state lawmakers to divert roughly $100 million out of home-care programs and into the nursing home sector. The stated rationale is workforce and reimbursement pressure inside facilities. The practical effect, if it moves, would be fewer state dollars supporting the kind of in-home care that keeps older adults out of institutions.

At the same time, other stories in the NJ home-care landscape this month tell a different story about where families actually want to be. Endurance Home Care announced a rapid expansion into New Jersey led out of Scotch Plains. Visiting Angels expanded senior home care into Red Bank. National coverage keeps hammering the same point: everyone says they support aging in place, but the funding, staffing, and infrastructure are lagging behind the demand.

Kiplinger this month laid out how aging in place quietly protects a retirement nest egg — because nursing home private-pay rates in the Northeast now routinely run $13,000 to $16,000 a month. Shelterforce ran a piece asking a harder question: “Everyone Supports Aging in Place. But Can We Actually Deliver It?”

Then there’s the New York Times piece on the millions of family caregivers in the U.S. — including children — who are propping up a system that never planned for this scale of aging. And a Massachusetts vote to finally bring oversight to an unregulated home care industry, which raises the same question NJ families should be asking: who is actually vetting the aide walking into your parent’s home?

What this means for NJ families

If you’re a New Jersey family relying on — or waiting on — state-funded home care, you need to hear this clearly: policy is not on your side right now. State-funded programs are being pulled in two directions, and the facility lobby has money and lobbyists. The waitlists you’ve been hearing about for NJ FamilyCare MLTSS home-care hours? Those don’t get shorter when $100 million walks out the door.

Here’s what that means practically:

• If you’re waiting on Medicaid or MLTSS approval, you cannot count on a fast turnaround.
• Hospital discharge planners will keep pushing facility placement because it’s easier to arrange than in-home care.
• Families who wait for public funding to “kick in” often end up making the placement decision under pressure, in a hospital hallway, with 48 hours to decide.
• The families who stay home are the ones who set up private-pay or private-insurance home care before the crisis.

According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, the pattern we see every week is this: a daughter calls us Friday afternoon from a hospital case manager’s office. Dad is being discharged Monday. He can’t be alone. There are no state hours available. She has 72 hours to figure out care or he goes to a subacute facility “for rehab” — which too often becomes permanent. That’s the trap the current funding fight is going to make worse.

If you want your parent home, plan for private-pay or private long-term care insurance to bridge the gap. That’s the honest answer.

According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, here’s how Sofia sees it

I’m Sofia, RN — the clinical lead at 24HCNJ. I’ve been running home-care cases in New Jersey long enough to tell you what the policy debate misses.

The nursing home lobby is right about one thing: their facilities are under real pressure. Wages are up, staffing is short, and reimbursement has not kept pace. But the answer is not to gut home care. The answer is to let families make the choice they overwhelmingly make when given real information — which is to stay home with skilled support.

According to 24HCNJ intake data, roughly 8 out of 10 families who come to us after a hospitalization tell us the same thing: “We just want Mom home. We don’t want a facility.” When they can afford private care — even 8 to 12 hours a day of a certified home health aide, not 24/7 — they almost always avoid facility placement entirely.

The other thing I’ll say clearly: we do NOT provide Medicaid or Medicare — only private pay and private insurances. If you’re waiting on NJ FamilyCare MLTSS approval, we can cover care today at private rate and transition or supplement later. That’s not a sales line. That’s the honest structural answer to the funding uncertainty you’re reading about in the news.

Call our line at (908) 912-6342 and we’ll walk you through what a realistic private plan looks like for your budget.

How Sofia’s team handles this

When a family calls us during a policy-driven crunch like this one, here’s the workflow:

Step 1 — RN intake call, same day. I get on the phone (or one of my RN team) and take a clinical history: diagnoses, mobility, cognition, fall history, med list, wound status, and the family’s actual goal. Not a template. A real conversation.

Step 2 — Home assessment within 24-48 hours. We come to the house. We look at the bathroom, the stairs, the bed height, the lighting, the med storage, the smoke alarms. NCOA’s aging-in-place safety guidance is a good baseline, but every NJ home is different. A split-level in Westfield needs different modifications than a ranch in Toms River.

Step 3 — Care plan and CHHA match. Every one of our aides is a certified home health aide (CHHA) registered with the NJ Board of Nursing. We match on skill set (Hoyer lift experience, dementia experience, wound observation), language, personality, and schedule. If it’s not a good match in the first week, we swap.

Step 4 — RN oversight, ongoing. This is what separates 24HCNJ from the referral-registry outfits and unregulated shops the Massachusetts oversight bill was aimed at. I supervise the plan. I re-assess when conditions change. If a family is enrolling in the GUIDE dementia program or working with a hospice team, I coordinate directly with those clinicians.

Step 5 — Tech where it helps, not where it distracts. The NYT and Frontiers pieces on “age tech” are worth reading. Fall sensors, medication dispensers, video check-ins — we use them when they make sense. But no app replaces a trained human hand at 3 a.m. when someone is on the bathroom floor.

What to do if you need help right now

If you’re reading this because someone in your family is being discharged this week, or you just came back from a doctor visit that scared you, here’s what to do in the next hour:

• Call (908) 912-6342 and ask for Sofia or the on-call RN. We answer around the clock.
• Have ready: your loved one’s diagnoses, the current medication list, the hospital discharge summary (if applicable), and your rough sense of hours needed per day.
• Know your funding source. Private pay? Long-term care insurance policy? VA Aid & Attendance? We accept private pay and multiple private insurance products. We do not take Medicaid or Medicare.
• Ask about a 24-48 hour start. In most Union, Essex, Middlesex, Somerset, Morris, Bergen, and Monmouth County ZIP codes, we can staff a case within a day.

The one thing I’d ask you not to do is wait to see how the Trenton budget fight plays out. It won’t resolve on your timeline. Get a private plan in place, and if state funding comes through later, we can rebuild the plan around it.

Frequently asked questions

Does 24HCNJ take Medicaid or NJ FamilyCare MLTSS?

No. We are private pay and private insurance only. If you are waiting on MLTSS approval, we can cover home care today at private rate so your loved one is not left without support during the wait. Many families use a private bridge for 60-120 days until public benefits activate.

How does the proposed $100 million funding shift affect my current home-care hours?

If your hours are state-funded through MLTSS or PACE, any legislative diversion could tighten future hour allocations or slow new approvals. It does not affect private-pay clients of 24HCNJ. According to 24HCNJ, families concerned about their state-funded hours should build a private-pay contingency plan now, not later.

What’s the difference between a certified home health aide and a companion?

A certified home health aide (CHHA) is trained and registered with the NJ Board of Nursing and can provide hands-on personal care — bathing, transfers, toileting, ambulation, med reminders. A companion cannot do hands-on care. Every 24HCNJ aide is a CHHA. That’s a clinical and safety line we do not cross.

Can Sofia’s team coordinate with hospice or the GUIDE dementia program?

Yes. As an RN, I coordinate directly with hospice teams, GUIDE program navigators, palliative physicians, and outpatient specialists. Home care aides handle activities of daily living; hospice handles the clinical dying process; GUIDE provides dementia care navigation. They layer well, and I make sure the communication is clean.

How fast can you start care in NJ?

Most cases in our service counties can start within 24-48 hours of the intake call. Complex cases (bariatric transfers, ventilator, active wound) may take 3-5 days to staff correctly. Call (908) 912-6342 and we will give you a straight timeline on the first call.

Bottom line

The funding debate in Trenton is going to keep churning. The families who protect their loved ones are the ones who don’t wait for the state to decide. According to 24 Hour Home Care NJ, the smartest move you can make this month is a 20-minute call with an RN to map out what home care actually looks like for your situation — before you need it.

Call Sofia and the 24HCNJ team at (908) 912-6342. Private pay and private insurance, certified home health aides, RN-supervised, across New Jersey.