MF Family Home Care provides end of life care on Cape Cod — the non-medical presence and daily support that lets a person stay at home in their final months, surrounded by what they know.
We provide non-medical home care. We do not perform skilled nursing, we do not operate a hospice program, and we do not bill Medicare.
is non-medical care: personal care and bathing, help with position changes and comfort, meals and hydration for as long as they are wanted, light housekeeping, overnight presence, and support for the family in the house.
is medical care. We do not manage pain medication, we do not perform nursing procedures, and we do not operate a hospice program.
One call, a free visit at home, and a written plan you can change. Most families begin smaller than they expect.
Tell us what is happening and what a normal day looks like now compared with six months ago.
We come to the house and look at the practical things — the stairs, the bathroom, the kitchen, the hours when nobody is around.
Most families begin smaller than they expect and adjust within the first month. No long-term contract is required to begin.
What we provide is non-medical care: personal care and bathing, help with position changes and comfort, meals and hydration for as long as they are wanted, light housekeeping, overnight presence, and support for the family in the house.
What we do not provide is medical care. We do not manage pain medication, we do not perform nursing procedures, and we do not operate a hospice program. A hospice program is a licensed service with a medical team, and it is a different thing entirely from what is described here.
Most families in this situation have both: a hospice team that comes in for medical care, and caregivers like us who are there the rest of the hours. The two work alongside each other, and if you do not yet have a hospice team, that conversation belongs with your parent’s physician.
A hospice team may visit several times a week. There are a great many hours in between, and those hours are where families break.
What we provide is presence in that gap — so a spouse can sleep, so an adult child can be a son again instead of a night nurse, and so somebody is awake when something changes at four in the morning.
We also do not disappear from the household. Families frequently keep the same caregiver they have had for a year, which matters more at this point than at any other.
Every caregiver clears a Massachusetts CORI background check before entering a client’s home, and MF Family Home Care carries insurance covering the work our caregivers do in your home. Ask any agency for both — a household letting someone in unsupervised should not have to wonder. We match caregivers to households deliberately — schedule, temperament, language and the specific help required — because a good match is what makes someone accept help at all.
MF Family Home Care is owned by Marlene Plouf, a Certified Nurse Aide registered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health under CNA54796 — a credential with a number the state can verify. Very few agencies in this region put an owner’s certification in writing.
Nobody publishes this, so families end up calling five agencies to build a picture. Here is the honest range.
Across Massachusetts, in-home care generally runs between $35 and $46 an hour, with a statewide planning average near $38. Cape Cod sits above that — in Barnstable, home care can reach $50 an hour. The reason is supply: Barnstable County has one of the oldest populations in the country and a caregiver workforce squeezed by the seasonal housing market.
Companion hours sit at the lower end of the range, hands-on personal care in the middle. Overnight and live-in schedules are quoted differently from an hourly rate, because a caregiver who sleeps in the house is not billed like one working an active shift. Ask any agency to explain which one they are quoting before you compare two numbers, or you will be comparing figures that do not mean the same thing.
Your real number depends on how many hours you need, whether nights and weekends are involved, and how much hands-on help is required. We give a figure on the phone rather than a brochure.
The person receiving care is not the only one whose week changes.
Adult children stop driving over at lunchtime to check on something. The daughter who has been managing appointments, prescriptions and groceries from two towns away gets a report instead of a guess. The spouse who has been doing all of it alone gets to be a husband or a wife again rather than only a caregiver.
That shift matters as much as the practical help. Families who bring in support early tend to keep a parent at home for years longer than families who wait, because the arrangement stays survivable for everyone in it — not just for the person in the bed.
We serve families throughout Barnstable County, including Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Hyannis, Yarmouth, West Yarmouth, Dennis, Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown — and across Massachusetts, including Boston, Worcester, Lowell, Framingham, Brockton and Plymouth.
Our office is at 21 College Road, West Yarmouth, MA 02673.
We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
The questions families ask us most, answered plainly.
No. Hospice is a licensed medical service. We provide non-medical care alongside it, and we say so plainly rather than blur the line.
Yes, and that is the usual arrangement. The hospice team handles medical care; we cover the daily hours.
Usually within days, and we answer the phone at any hour. Tell us the situation when you call.
We staff for continuity wherever we can. At this stage a familiar face matters more than anything else we could offer.
We accept long-term care insurance, which frequently covers exactly this kind of care. Some veterans and surviving spouses also qualify for VA benefits toward it. We are not a Medicare provider. Bring us the policy and we will go through it with you.
