Home care in Plainfield, NJ, for parents in old Queen City houses

Plainfield's own hospital, Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center, has closed, but the JFK Muhlenberg Satellite Emergency Department still runs on the old campus at 1200 Randolph Road, part of Hackensack Meridian Health. An ambulance can still bring your father there. If he needs to be admitted, he goes somewhere else.

For most families that means JFK University Medical Center in Edison, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Rahway, Overlook Medical Center in Summit or Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth. Short-term rehab is often closer to home. AristaCare at Norwood Terrace on Norwood Avenue, Complete Care at Woodlands on Woodland Avenue and Complete Care at Plainfield on Park Avenue are all in the city, and Ashbrook Care and Rehabilitation Center is on Raritan Road in Scotch Plains.

So the person writing your parent's discharge plan works in another town and has never seen the house. Hospital-to-home care is how we close that gap. A caregiver is there when your parent walks in, picks up the new prescriptions, gets a simple supper on the table and stays close for the first bath and the first night.

Plainfield is called the Queen City, and its tall old houses are a big part of the reason. The Van Wyck Brooks, Crescent Area, Hillside Avenue and Netherwood Heights neighborhoods are full of them.

They are lovely houses to grow old in and hard houses to be frail in. The bedrooms and the only full bathroom are upstairs, the washing machine is in the basement, and the staircase is narrow with a rail on one side. So a Plainfield care plan usually starts with the stairs:

• A caregiver on hand for the trips up and down, morning and night
• Laundry carried to the basement by someone other than your mother
• Personal care planned around a high-sided tub, a shower bench and the grab bars it needs
• Help turning the front parlor or dining room into a first-floor bedroom when the stairs stop being safe
• Overnight care for the walk down a dark upstairs hallway at 2 a.m.

Apartments near the Netherwood station and the city's newer houses take the stairs away and bring their own problems: a tight bathroom, a hallway too narrow for a walker to turn. We look at the house with you during the free assessment and plan for the one your parent actually lives in.

A caregiver works best alongside what the city and county already provide. These are worth a phone call before you pay for anything:

• The Plainfield Senior Citizens Center, 400 East Front Street, (908) 753-3506. Open weekdays, with classes, activities and company.
• Union County Division on Aging, 10 Elizabethtown Plaza in Elizabeth, (908) 527-4870. It is the county's Area Agency on Aging and the first call for benefits screening, home-delivered meals and caregiver support.
• Union County Division of Social Services, which keeps an office at 200 West Second Street in Plainfield, so benefits paperwork doesn't mean a trip to Elizabeth.
• Union County Paratransit, (908) 241-8300. Curb-to-curb rides for residents 60 and over at $3 each way, with set days for veterans going to the VA in East Orange and Lyons. The county suggests booking five to seven days ahead.

That week of notice is where a caregiver makes the difference. A discharge that happens this afternoon, or a cardiology appointment moved to Thursday, can't wait for a van. Our caregivers drive to appointments in Edison, Rahway or Summit, sit in the waiting room, and let you know what the doctor said.

Always Responsive Home Care of Union County works out of 20 Jackson Drive in Cranford, a short trip from Plainfield. The office is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with 24/7 on-call support outside those hours.

The office is led by two registered nurses who came to home care from emergency medicine. Gianni Mirra, RN, BSN, our Executive Director, served more than two decades with the FDNY and has nursed in emergency rooms, medical-surgical units, psychiatric care and home care. Francesco Mazza, our Director of Nursing, was an FDNY EMT and firefighter before a decade as an emergency room nurse. You can read about them before you call.

Care runs from a few hourly visits a week to overnight shifts and live-in care, with Alzheimer's and dementia care when memory is the worry. You pay us directly, and if your parent has long-term care insurance, we file the claim and the policy reimburses you. There are no large deposits, no long-term contracts and no cancellation penalties. The details are on our payment options page, and our service areas list every Union County town we cover.