Henry was helping his father around the house for many years. He lived just a couple of blocks down the road and had been living there for about twenty years. As his father aged, he knew that he would need more help with certain things. Mostly, in the beginning, Henry was helping out with work that needed to be done around the house, but in time, he was providing home care to his father as well.
Before long, Henry was essentially offering veterans home care to his father, because his father had served during the Korean War. Henry didn’t know anything about the VA Aid and Attendance Benefit at first, but when a coworker and friend told him about it, he started looking into it.
The more he looked into it, the more he realized that he was actually a caregiver for his father. He didn’t think about it like that, though; he merely saw it as being a support system for his family. It was just something that he figured was his job, as the eldest child and the fact that he lived not too far away from his father in the first place.
He talked to his father about the program that would help pay for veterans home care and his father wanted to know, if he qualified for the VA Aid and Attendance Benefit, if Henry would be able to collect money as a result of the care he was providing.
Henry decided to bring his father to the VA center nearest to them one afternoon. They waited a long time to speak to someone about this benefit and what they learned was that yes, his father could very well qualify for the benefit and yes, as long as Henry was providing home care to his father, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t working through an agency, or that he was related, he could be paid, through the pension, for his work.
This was important because up until this point in time, Henry was providing this care on his own time, and it often meant having to give up some of the things that he enjoyed. Occasionally, he had to leave work early to be there for his father as well.
If you are caring for a veteran in the family, and they qualify for the Aid and Attendance pension, this can be used to pay for home care. It can pay for your service, as long as it’s devoted to home care for the veteran and not anyone else.
For more information and to learn about Veterans Home Care Services, contact Veteran’s Home Care at (888) 314-6075.
