- Household Support for Seniors
Home Help in Ottawa
Light Housekeeping, Meals, Laundry and Errands
— So Staying Home Stays Possible
The reason most seniors leave home isn’t a single crisis. It’s the slow accumulation of everything that stops getting done — the laundry that piles up, the fridge that empties, the floors that don’t get washed. Home help removes that pressure, quietly and reliably, so your parent keeps their home and their independence.
- Light housekeeping, laundry, meals, groceries and errands
- The same caregiver each visit — someone who knows where things go
- From three or four Week to daily support
- Bilingual caregivers available across Ottawa
Trusted & Local
Canadian Family-Owned
5-Star Rated
Veterans Affairs Approved
Insured & Background-Checked
Help with the House is really helpful for staying in It
An essential advantage of home help is what it protects: autonomy. When the practical work of running a household stops being manageable, everything else starts to look like a reason to leave—and the conversation shifts from “How do we support mom at home?” to “Where does mom go next?” Home help changes that math.
Our caregivers assist with light housework—cleaning, laundry, dishes, tidying—so the home stays clean and genuinely safe to move around in. They plan and prepare nutritious meals around real dietary needs and real preferences, not a generic menu. And they provide medication reminders and help keep medications organized, so doses don’t get missed or doubled.
Having home help in place also changes something for you. Knowing your parent has professional support at home — someone who will actually notice if something is wrong — takes the constant low-grade worry about their safety and well-being off your shoulders.
Call 613-518-8258 for a free consultation—no obligation, no pressure, no sales script.
- OUR COMMITMENT
What Home Help Includes — and What It Doesn't
Home help is ongoing, light household support delivered by a trained caregiver: tidying, laundry, dishes, bathroom and kitchen cleaning, floors, bed-making, meal preparation, groceries, errands, and medication reminders. It is designed to be sustainable week after week, in a home someone is living in.
It is not a deep-cleaning or restoration service. To be straight with you about the boundaries — our caregivers don’t do heavy lifting or furniture moving, exterior windows or anything requiring a ladder, snow removal or yard work, pet waste beyond basic feeding, or hoarding cleanups. Those need a specialist service, and we’d rather tell you that now than on the first visit.
Here’s the distinction that actually matters, though: a cleaning service cleans a house. A home helper notices a person. Our caregivers are trained to spot the things a cleaner walks past — expired food at the back of the fridge, a stack of unopened mail, bruising, weight loss, a walker that’s been pushed into a corner and stopped being used. Then they tell someone.
- Setting Expectations Honestly
Same tasks, different job. The tasks are the reason we’re in the house. Noticing is the reason it matters.
- OUR SERVICES
What Our Home Help Service Covers
Every plan is built from what your family actually needs.
Light Housekeeping
Dusting, vacuuming, sweeping and washing floors, cleaning bathroom surfaces and toilets, wiping down the kitchen and appliances, emptying bins, and general tidying — enough to keep the home clean, comfortable and free of trip hazards.
Laundry, Linens and Bedmaking
Washing, drying, folding and putting away. Changing sheets and towels on a regular schedule. Help organizing closets and drawers so getting dressed doesn't become a daily search.
Meal Planning and Preparation
Nutritious meals prepared around dietary requirements — diabetic, low-sodium, soft-texture — and around what your parent actually likes to eat. We cook the foods they recognize, in the ways they recognize.
Dishes and Kitchen Upkeep
Washing up after meals, keeping the kitchen sanitary, and clearing expired food from the fridge and cupboards. Food safety is a real risk when sight and smell decline.
Medication Reminders and Organization
Timely reminders help organize pillboxes and repeat prescriptions and keep medication routines on track. For families needing more, a registered nurse can manage medication directly.
Safety and Clutter Management
Clearing walkways, managing accumulated clutter, and flagging hazards — loose rugs, poor lighting on stairs, an overloaded outlet. Falls are the leading cause of injury hospitalizations for Canadian seniors, and most of them happen at home.
Wellbeing Checks and Family Updates
After every visit, families get an update on how their parent is doing — mood, appetite, energy, anything that changed. This is especially valuable if you're managing care from another city.
- Choosing the Right Service
Home Help, Housekeeping, or Personal Care — Which One Do You Actually Need?
These three get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. Most families start with one and add another later.
Housekeeping (a cleaning service)
A cleaner cleans the house and leaves. Their focus is on the house, not on the people living there—there's little continuity or relationship built from one visit to the next. Perfect if the only problem is the house. Wrong fit if you're also worried about meals, medication, isolation, or safety.
Home Help (what this page is about)
A trained caregiver handles the housework—cleaning, laundry, meals, errands, medication reminders—and keeps an eye on how your parent is doing. Non-medical, no hands-on personal care. This is the right starting point for most families.
Personal Care (hands-on support)
Assistance with bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting, and mobility, delivered by a personal support worker. When your parent needs help with their body rather than their house. Home help and personal care combine easily into one plan with one caregiver.
Not sure which one fits? That’s what the free consultation is for. We will tell you if you need less than you think.
Not sure how many hours you actually need?
Most families overestimate. We'll walk through the week with you honestly and recommend the smallest amount of support that solves the problem.
The Families Who Call Us About Home Help
Seniors Who Are Fine, Except for the House
No diagnosis, no crisis. Just a parent in their eighties who can no longer manage stairs with a laundry basket, or who has quietly stopped cooking proper meals because standing at the stove is exhausting. This is the most common — and the most preventable — situation we see.
After a Hospital Stay or Surgery
Discharge instructions rarely cover who does the shopping, makes the bed, or does the laundry. Short-term home help through the recovery window prevents the readmission that comes from skipped meals, a cluttered floor, or a missed prescription.
Adult Children Managing From a Distance
If you're in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver and your parent is in Ottawa, home help gives you a reliable pair of eyes in the house each week — plus an update after every visit, so you're not reconstructing the situation from a phone call.
Family Caregivers Who Are Doing Everything
If you're already handling the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning on top of your own household and job, home help is the piece that gives you your weekends back — without your parent losing any independence.
Seniors Living With Mobility Limits or Chronic Conditions
Arthritis, COPD, Parkinson's, low vision, recovery from a stroke or a fall. When energy has to be rationed, household work is the first thing that should go — and the last thing most people are willing to give up.
Sounds like your family?
One honest conversation, no obligation. We'll tell you what makes sense.
- Who Home Help Is For
How Home Help Is Paid For in Ottawa — Including the Options That Aren't Us
Home help in Ottawa is funded three ways, and it’s worth understanding all three before you pay for anything.
Subsidized community programs. Organizations including VON and Ottawa’s community health centres run subsidized home help programs with sliding-scale fees, typically serving seniors 60+ and adults with physical disabilities. Rates are low and visits are usually weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. The trade-offs are waitlists, limited hours, and less flexibility on scheduling and caregiver consistency. If your needs are modest and you can wait, start here — we’ll tell you so.
Publicly funded hours. Some households qualify for home support hours through Ontario Health atHome, or through the Family-Managed Home Care Program, which lets eligible families direct their own funding to a provider of their choice — Freiheit Care is an accepted provider for households who qualify. These are assessed based on need and usually cover personal care before household support. The trade-offs are waitlists, limited hours, and less flexibility on scheduling and caregiver consistency. Many families use public hours as a base and add private hours on top.
Private home care. This is what Freiheit Care provides. You get flexible scheduling, a caregiver matched to your parent, consistency visit after visit, RN oversight where the plan needs it, and no waitlist — usually starting within days. Canadian veterans may be eligible for funded home help through Veterans Affairs Canada under the Veterans Independence Program, which covers housekeeping and grounds maintenance, among other supports. We’re a VAC-approved provider and handle that coordination directly.
We give you a transparent, itemized quote after the free consultation. No hidden fees, no minimum contract, no pressure to buy hours you don’t need.
- Straight Answers on Cost
If a subsidized program is genuinely the better fit for your family, we will tell you that. We’d rather be the agency you trust than the one you resent.
Someone Who Knows Where the Good Scissors Live
There is a specific, underrated value in a caregiver who has been coming to the same house for a year. They know which cupboard the mugs go in. They know your mother takes her tea with the bag left in. They know that the third stair creaks and the back door sticks. They notice when the biscuit tin hasn’t gone down since last week — and they know that means something.
None of that transfers to a substitute. Every new caregiver restarts the relationship from zero, and for an older person letting a stranger into their home, that restart is genuinely uncomfortable. It’s one of the main reasons seniors refuse help in the first place.
Caregiver turnover is the biggest quality problem in this industry, and the cause is unglamorous: pay. Underpaid caregivers work multiple jobs, burn out, and leave.
In May 2026, Freiheit Care was certified as a Champion Level Living Wage Employer by the Ontario Living Wage Network — the highest tier in Ontario. We pay above the living wage, we pay mileage between visits, and we build toward full-time hours with benefits. That is how you keep good caregivers, and keeping good caregivers is the only way to give your parent the same familiar face every week.
- Why the Same Caregiver Matters
Fair pay → caregivers stay → the same person every visit → your parent stops feeling like they’re hosting a stranger.
- AREAS WE SERVE
Home Help Across Ottawa and the Surrounding Region
- Ottawa (city-wide)
- Kanata
- nepean
- Barrhaven
- Orleans
- Gloucester
- Alta Vista
- Sandy Hill
- Manotick
- Kemptville
- Arnprior
- Ottawa (city-wide)
- Kanata
- nepean
- Barrhaven
- Orleans
- Gloucester
- Alta Vista
- Sandy Hill
- Manotick
- Kemptville
- Arnprior
We provide home help wherever your loved one lives — a house, a condo, an apartment, or a retirement residence where the included housekeeping doesn’t go far enough
Bilingual caregivers available
Ottawa winters are when many seniors find it hardest to get out — so we come to them. From November to April, grocery runs, appointments, and everyday errands all get harder, right when the household workload goes up. If your loved one only needs support during the winter months, that’s fine with us — we’re flexible to your needs, including flexible timing around storm days.
- getting started
What Happens After You Call
One Honest Conversation
Call 613-518-8258 or send the form. A care coordinator listens to what's actually going on—the laundry, the meals, the stairs, the worry—and books a free consultation. No obligation, no sales script.
We Look at the Week Together
We walk through what needs doing and how often, discuss at the home itself for safety and access, and recommend a schedule. If the honest answer is four hours a week rather than fourteen, that's what we'll say.
We Match, Then We Keep It Consistent
We match your parent with a caregiver on skills, personality, and language—then keep that caregiver. In most cases home help starts within days.
- FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Home Help in Ottawa — Your Questions Answered
Home help is ongoing, non-medical support with the practical running of a household: light housekeeping, laundry, meal preparation, grocery shopping, errands, and medication reminders. It's delivered by a trained caregiver in the client's own home, usually on a regular weekly schedule. The purpose is to remove the household workload that makes staying at home unmanageable, so seniors can keep living independently.
A cleaning service cleans the house and leaves. A home helper handles the household and pays attention to the person — noticing changes in appetite, mobility, mood or safety, and reporting them to the family. Our caregivers are vetted, insured, bonded, police-checked and trained in senior care, which a general cleaning company is not.
We don't do deep cleaning or restoration work, heavy lifting or furniture moving, exterior windows or anything requiring a ladder, snow removal or yard work, pet waste beyond basic feeding, or hoarding cleanups. If your parent needs one of those, tell us and we'll point you to a service that does it properly.
Private home help is priced hourly, and the total depends on how many hours per week and what's included. Subsidized community programs charge considerably less on a sliding scale but come with waitlists and limited hours. We give you a transparent, itemized quote after the free consultation, with no hidden fees and no minimum contract.
Not by OHIP directly. Some households qualify for publicly funded home support hours through Ontario Health at Home, though these usually prioritize personal care over household tasks. Subsidized home help programs run by VON and Ottawa community health centres are available to seniors 60+ and adults with physical disabilities on a sliding-scale fee. Canadian veterans may qualify for funded housekeeping through the Veterans Independence Program. We'll help you figure out what applies.
Three or four hours a week is a common starting point, often on a single weekly visit covering housekeeping, laundry, and a grocery run. Families frequently add a second visit later or extend hours after a hospital stay. We'd rather start you low and increase than sell you hours you don't use.
Yes — that is the point. We match on skills, personality and language, then keep that caregiver assigned. Consistency is why we became a Champion Level Living Wage Employer: fairly paid caregivers stay, and caregivers who stay are the ones who know how your parent likes things done.
Yes. We provide bilingual caregivers across Ottawa, Vanier, and Orléans.
Yes, and we can adapt to your needs as necessary. Home help often starts as household support and expands to include personal care — bathing, dressing, mobility — as needs change. Freiheit Care offers the full continuum, including RN-led nursing care, so you don't have to change agencies when the situation changes.
This is very common, and usually about control rather than the caregiver. We start small — a short weekly visit framed around one specific task your parent has already admitted is a nuisance, like the laundry or making the bed. Once the relationship exists, the rest follows. Introducing help before there's a crisis is far easier than after.
Ottawa city-wide, including Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orléans, Vanier, Stittsville, Gloucester, Manotick and the Glebe, plus Kemptville and Arnprior and Aylmer.
Usually within a few days of the free consultation. There's no waitlist for private home help. If you're working to a hospital discharge date or another deadline, tell us and we'll work to it.
- WHAT FAMILIES ARE SAYING
Trusted. Loved. Recommended.
Real stories from Ottawa families who trust Freiheit Care for reliable, respectful support at home.
May 2025
Choosing a caregiving agency for a loved one is not an easy decision. After trying a few different options, we were incredibly fortunate to find Freiheit Care. From our very first phone call, we have been treated with kindness, respect, understanding, and professionalism.
The caregivers are skilled, dependable, patient, and genuinely compassionate. They have taken the time to understand and handle my parents' unique needs, routines, and preferences.
June 2025
Freiheit recently provided respite care in our home to allow my husband and I to take our first trip in 20+ years. They cared for our intellectually disabled son, teenaged daughter and our dog which allowed us to travel without worry. We received timely updates and knew that the care worker had the support of a nurse (if needed)as well as back up personnel. Meals, supervision, and companionship requirements, and detailed care instructions were followed to the letter. Highly recommend Freiheit for respite care.
May 2025
For the past year and a half we have been receiving health care assistance from Freiheit. Helen, the co-owner, has been very efficient and pleasant to deal with. She quickly located a nurse with all the skills and values we were seeking, who is a great fit with us. She has checked with us a few times to make sure that things are going well and is easy to get in touch with. Her agency has an effective way of checking that her staff are present and prompt, not that we have had any concerns with that.
A Year Ago
Choosing a caregiving agency for a loved one is not an easy decision. After trying a few different options, we were incredibly fortunate to find Freiheit Care. From our very first phone call, we have been treated with kindness, respect, understanding, and professionalism.
The caregivers are skilled, dependable, patient, and genuinely compassionate. They have taken the time to understand and handle my parents' unique needs, routines, and preferences.
June 2025
I have been a nurse for 23 years and have not had the pleasure of working with such a compassionate and caring team. From the CEO to HR..to payroll, I am treated with respect and am made to feel that I am much more than a number. I can reach out to any of the management team, at any time and am answered promptly. Everything from Communication to being paid is in a timely fashion.
I would highly recommend having Freiheit as an employer to my colleagues. I am honoured to work for Helen and the team.
2 Years Ago
Most of all she told me that she and her
physician- husband (co-owner of the company) were proud of their handpicked "team". Finally, she seemed just kind, just so kind and compassionate... you could hear it in her voice and feel it through the airwaves😊😊What a leader she is!!
Thank you for your passion, Helen!
5.0
Average Rating
2019
Serving Ottawa Since
RN-Led
Clinical Oversight
100%
Vetted & Insured Caregivers
- Take The First Step
Book a Free Home Help Consultation
- Our Commitment
Tell Us How We Can Help
Your loved one deserves more than just safety at home — they deserve connection, joy, and the dignity of living life on their own terms. Freiheit Care’s companion care services in Ottawa are designed to deliver exactly that, with the professionalism and warmth your family can count on for in-home care services.
Call 613-518-8258 today or request a free in-home consultation online. Let us show you what compassionate, personalized companion care looks like — for your parent, your family, and your peace of mind.
- Canadian Family-Owned
- RN-Led Care
- Background Checked
- Insured & Bonded
- No Obligation Consultation
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We walk through the week with you and recommend the schedule that fits.
