Lakewood, NJ Home Care Built Around Your Parent's Actual House

Lakewood is not a retirement town, and anyone who writes about it as one has not been here. The 2020 census counted 135,158 residents, up 45.6 percent from 92,843 in 2010, and the Census Bureau estimated 141,985 by 2024, making Lakewood New Jersey's fourth-largest municipality. That growth came largely from the township's Orthodox Jewish and Latino communities, and a high birth rate has pulled the median age sharply down.

The practical effect is that a great many Lakewood seniors do not live alone. They live with, above, or next door to adult children and grandchildren. Home care in those households is rarely "someone to sit with Mom all day." It is a specific block of hours that closes a specific gap: the weekday mornings when the family is at work and school, the two nights a week nobody can stay awake for, the stretch after a hospital stay when the household's usual arrangement simply is not enough.

A few things are worth saying out loud on the first phone call, because they shape the schedule and the match rather than being an afterthought: whether the kitchen is kosher and how strictly it is kept, whether the household is Shabbos-observant and what that means for Friday afternoon and Saturday coverage, what language your parent is most comfortable being spoken to in, and which hours genuinely need covering rather than which hours look tidy on a calendar.

Short, well-placed shifts are often the right answer here. See hourly care and companion care.

Handing over the car keys is usually the moment a Lakewood family realizes how much of a week is appointments. The county's answer is Ocean Ride, the Ocean County transit system, whose Reserve-A-Ride program provides door-to-door non-emergency medical transportation for residents 60 and over and adults 18 and over with disabilities. You book by phone at 732-736-8989 between 8:15 a.m. and 4:15 p.m., up to four weeks ahead. A round trip is $6.00, or $3.00 with a valid PAAD card, and every vehicle is wheelchair lift-equipped. Ocean Ride also runs thirteen fixed bus routes across the county.

Two details in that program are the reason families end up calling us. First, Ocean Ride drivers are not permitted to enter the home, so the rider has to already be at ground level, dressed and ready, when the van pulls up. Second, the driver can arrive anywhere within a one to one-and-a-half hour window around the appointment time.

Add those together and you get a two-hour job that has nothing to do with the doctor: getting someone bathed and dressed, down the front step, and waiting with them outside until the van comes. That is what a lot of our Lakewood shifts actually consist of, and it is worth budgeting for honestly rather than discovering it the first Tuesday. See mobility care.

Not everything a family needs comes from a home care agency, and we would rather you had the right number than the wrong one.

• Ocean County Office of Senior Services, 732-929-2091. The county's Area Agency on Aging, on Hooper Avenue in Toms River. This is the front door for benefits screening, caregiver support and the county's aging network.
• Lakewood Community Services Corporation (LCSC), 732-886-6964. Delivers meals to Lakewood and Toms River seniors Monday through Friday and runs caregiver support groups; its senior programming is funded under Title III of the Older Americans Act through the Ocean County Office of Senior Services.
• Ocean Ride Reserve-A-Ride, 732-736-8989, for medical transportation.

Our own Ocean County office is at 1400 Hooper Avenue, Floor 2, in Toms River, straight down Route 9 from Lakewood. The office is open weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and someone is reachable around the clock, because discharges and falls do not observe office hours.

When you are ready, call (732) 447-9900 or book a free in-home visit. We will walk the house with you, look at the bathroom and the stairs, and tell you plainly what hours we think it takes. Payment questions, including long-term care insurance, are covered on our payment options page, and the full coverage map is on our Ocean County service areas page.