Always Responsive Home Care: how an RN-owned New Jersey home care agency works

Always Responsive Home Care is a family-owned home care agency that a registered nurse, Teresa Sajkowski, RN, BSN, CMC, started in New Jersey in 2010. Today it provides hourly, live-in and 24-hour home care from offices across central New Jersey, the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, and two Florida communities. Here is how it works, from a family's first phone call to the nurse's later check-ins.

Where the company came from

Teresa spent ten years as a home care and hospice nurse before she started the company, and that experience shaped how it runs. In her own words:

I started my career as a Registered Nurse because I've always found joy in helping people. Early on, I realized my passion was for helping seniors live out their lives in the best way possible. For ten years, I worked as a home care and hospice nurse, gaining valuable experience and insight into the needs of seniors and their families.

She describes starting the agency at a time when she was newly married with young children:

Despite being newly married with young children, I decided to take a huge step and start my own home care agency in 2010. I knew I could make a difference by using my strong background in nursing to improve home care services. This led to the birth of Always Responsive Home Care.

More than 15 years later, the company is still family owned, and it has cared for 4,000+ families. You can read her full letter on our about page.

What the name promises

Home care problems rarely wait for business hours. A caregiver calls out sick, a father is discharged from the hospital on a Friday evening, a mother with dementia won't settle at night. The name is a promise about those moments: whenever you need us, after hours or on a holiday, you'll reach someone who can help, 365 days a year.

How care starts

1. A phone call. You tell us about your mom or dad, what's been getting harder, and what worries you most. If you'd rather write, the care request form works too, and we'll call you back.
2. A free in-home assessment. A nurse visits, meets your parent, walks through the house with an eye for fall risks, reviews medications and routines, and writes a care plan with the family. There's no obligation. See what the assessment covers.
3. A matched caregiver. We choose a caregiver for your parent's needs and personality, introduce them, and set the schedule. When a family needs help quickly, we can often staff care the same day.
4. Ongoing check-ins. The nurse keeps checking on the plan, and we adjust hours and tasks as needs change.

The care we provide

Everything we provide is non-medical home care, the daily help that lets someone stay at home:

• Personal care: bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting and moving safely around the house
• Companion and homemaker care: meals, housekeeping, errands, rides and company
• Alzheimer's and dementia care from caregivers trained in memory care
• Hospital-to-home care in the first weeks after a hospital or rehab stay
• Respite care that gives family caregivers time off
• Schedules from a few hours a week to overnight, live-in and 24-hour care

Live-in care is offered in New Jersey. Our Florida offices provide round-the-clock care as 24-hour care, with caregivers working in shifts. Our caregivers don't do nursing tasks such as wound care or injections. When someone needs them, we work alongside the home health agency or nurse who provides them, so the nurse handles the clinical visit and our caregiver handles the rest of the day.

Nurses behind every care plan

Registered nurses write every care plan and supervise every caregiver, to standards above what the state requires. In practice, that means the plan is written by someone who can spot a medication problem or a fall risk, the caregiver has a clinician to call with a question, and the family hears promptly after any fall or change in condition. Caregivers keep daily shift notes, and the plan is updated after a fall or hospital stay rather than at the next scheduled review.

Who the caregivers are

Our caregivers are our own employees, not contractors a family has to manage. We screen them and train them, including in Alzheimer's and dementia care. We match each caregiver to the family, aim to send the same person each visit, and if the match isn't working, we make a change quickly without a gap in care.

Paying for care

We're a private-pay agency. Families pay us directly, and we file long-term care insurance claims each week at no extra charge so the insurer reimburses the family. Many veterans and surviving spouses put VA Aid and Attendance benefits toward the cost. There are no long-term contracts. We're not contracted with New Jersey's Medicaid plans, and when another agency fits a family's funding better, we'll say so. Our payment options page and our guide to what home care costs go into detail, and we give every family a written quote after the assessment.

Where we work

Our main office is in Marlboro, serving Monmouth County. Our other New Jersey offices serve Mercer, Middlesex, Ocean, Somerset, Hunterdon and Union counties. In Pennsylvania, our Lehigh Valley office serves families across the region, and in Florida we have offices in Sarasota and Ponte Vedra. The locations page lets you check a ZIP code.

What families say

We're rated 5 stars on Google by 150+ families. One daughter, managing her parent's care from a distance, put it this way:

"Always Responsive Home Care has been exceptional in every way. The caretakers they've provided have been compassionate, dependable, and truly dedicated to meeting our needs. What stands out most is how quickly and efficiently they respond whenever we reach out. Whether we have a last-minute request or need to adjust the schedule, their team handles it with professionalism and genuine care. Their reliability has made a real difference for our family, giving us peace of mind knowing help is always just a call away. We're grateful for their support and highly recommend them to anyone looking for responsive, high-quality home-care services."

Alex B., Ocean County, NJ. More families' stories are on our testimonials page.

Memberships and accreditation

We belong to the Home Care Association of America and the National Alliance for Care at Home, and we're a corporate partner of the Aging Life Care Association. Outside Florida, we're also CHAP accredited and BBB accredited. Our New Jersey and Florida offices belong to their state home care associations.

Calling about a parent

If you're starting to look into care for a parent, call us at (866) 562-1845 or send a care request. We'll listen, answer your questions honestly, and if home care makes sense, set up a free assessment.